A Letter to My Grandpa If I Sit With His Again

Remember that I mistakenly sat on your lap,
remember that. I was just tall enough.
The plaid blanket rested across your knees,
and I slipped when I tried to climb up.
You couldn't reach down for me, so someone else helped.

It was seventy degrees at Christmas.
The tree outside the kitchen dropped brown seeds.
Winter weighed from the opaque sky,
and we took its complexion.
My pink face and blonde hair bleached in low light.

I wait for you when I've grown up.
I'm sitting in the dirt in the shade – it's too fine.
The chickens you had scratched the soil
too small for a garden.
They will build a house on this, by the way,
and cheat on the rent.

I'm going a little farther than you did -
and a little further. I'm going to inhale
the dry wind to callus myself against the desert.
And I will call you over to rub your palms
on the powder on rocks .

There was never water near this dryland.
The ground cracks with no rain and moths
cover the concrete. I found a little plot of land
that I can have in June, and water will never run.