Sitting at back of the great hall
I see heads bob down and up
like buoys in rough sea
not recognizing her face
in that amorphous makeup.

After a while, the novelty of height
of colors, or black
fades into the crowd, albeit apart
from you and me, miners too
in just a different mine.

Later on, as her bones
heavy and sharp, lie, as root
under the cotton sheet
as her dark blue hair, thick
and liquid like slime

stains the whites of the room,
I am awake in spirit only
but defeated in my flesh.
I think of when, in the arms of my grandma
I'd pinch the skin of her hand.

We would both watch,
fascinated by the shape
that would only slowly fade,
by the veins coughing red
and slow blue, and by treacherous time
counting its grains of sand.