I wrote this poem years ago in college for a poetry class. It's about my Grandma Dahl. She had a hard life, but she was kind, soft, and full of love.

River Gazing

by Sandra Dee

Grandma told me once,
with cheek in palm
while sitting at the kitchen table,

about the river.
How she hardly noticed
her boys

reaching blindly
for snapping turtles buried
beneath boulders

and mud.
She told of fingertips,
dead white

from dirty dishwater
soaked of it's clean
aroma, curling

the knife,
and whiskey breath
against her ear,

pulsing
a purpled eye.
She told how drops

of steam
eased down the pane,
settling

upon a chipped sill,
eroding her salvation
a few yards

from where the boys played,
deep in the Mississippi,
where she could end it all.

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