Your great-grandmother
is no place now,
but I still see her image
in this oval mirror;
she is letting her silver hair down
around her shoulders
like a cloud.
Your grandmother sees her
as a young woman
in an apron,
pinning back brown curls on a washday morning.
I see all of us
in your piercing eyes.
You race through the house.
You break crayons
and hide them
in the dark places.
When I was little,
I fed them through the furnace grate
to the beast who lived below.
It's covered by carpet now.
Run yourself out. Laugh with us
into the mirror.
When you're sleepy
our supply of stories
will seem inexhaustible.
But in this dark, old-fashioned place we've brought you to
we're dying,
and you'll have to remember us
as we were.