Fractured

My grandmother is only one day

into her infirmity and doped up

on Morphine. Her shoulder is immobile

beneath layers of plaster.

Her eighty-five-year-old frame droops

from the weight of it.

My mother confesses:

she cannot take care of her mother.

I am not she says a nursemaid.

My mother is angry. Angry

at my sister who didn’t give enough

support, angry at my grandmother

for shuffling her feet, angry even

at the dog that was tucked beneath

my grandmother’s arm

as they all three tried to squeeze

into the door of the vet’s office.

She calls me from the emergency room

to say that grandmother fractured her shoulder

in three places. She’s become an invalid

overnight, she says. My sister calls her cruel

for refusing to run the bathwater, refusing

to wash my grandmother’s naked body, for

not even considering renting

a wheelchair for her to move from place

to place. When grandmother whispers

that she is afraid to walk, my mother

tells her that there’s nothing wrong with

her legs, tells her she’ll have to go to a

nursing home if she won’t walk

to the bathroom: one piss in the bed is

understandable, two is teetering too

close to in-home care.

My sister does not understand that there

is too much to overcome between them—

always the memory of the black dress

grandmother refused to wear

on the day of her husband’s funeral—

the way she turned to my mother and said,

I am not in mourning.