Confession

I can tell you now

that you are my favorite.

You have outlasted all the rest.

As a boy I said straight to your face

that I loved my other grandmother but you

not at all. In an instant you grew taller

and more distant, but I bounced away

to the playroom and gouged the eyes

of my mother’s forgotten dolls.

Now you shrink and close in on yourself.

You set your face to the light. The empty hours

pull the dust around them like a shawl.

Brent Fisk

Barnwood poetry magazine