Poem: Grandmother's Last Day

[W13]

I wrote this for a real life poetry recital and they told me that "poems don't have to rhyme or have structure" so I wrote this just to see what that'd be like. Here it is...

(True story btw.)


Life is short. Life is precious. Life is everything.
While death, well death is the ultimate goodbye. The final … stop.
So, there I was, about ten years ago,
Having flown across the world for a rare family reunion.
An ancient, cloth-draped face greeted me. Wrinkled like an old tree bark.
“Blessings!” she croaked and swung a fistful of raw meat around my face,
She absent-mindedly recited prayers under her breath, hissing and spitting.
I watched flies orbit the revolving bloody hunk of meat like little satellites.
Then, suddenly, she blew a lung full of cold, granny breath down my shirt neck.
The day was hot and humid, and the cold breath helped, but still… gross!
Nobody wants a 300-year-old crone to blow mummy farts towards your nipples.
“Is this one of yours?” the venerable lizard asked my mother. She obviously didn’t remember me.
I’m not close with my grandparents. Geographically or otherwise.
Grandpa on the other hand, actually had dementia and was a bag of antiquated bones. A true living fossil.
There was not much conversation to be had with somebody who has no idea who you are, so
I spent the day asking him inappropriate questions with my cousins:
“Grandpa, how many English side-chicks did you have?”
“Grandpa, did you ever shoot a man?”
“Grandpa, how many Greek gods did you know personally?”
His answers were droning mumbles that sounded like distant thunder.
The comedy though was seeing grandma’s reactions: Telling us to beg Allah’s forgiveness before it’s too late. 
“We’re young, we won’t die any time soon!”, we’d retort to even more fury.
 
Night fell and my jet-lag kept me tossing, turning, and sighing,
I couldn’t take it. I skipped out of bed, out the room, and into the atrium.
Other than the sound of crickets and the occasional auto-rickshaw outside, it was tranquil.
All the bedroom doors were shut except for the one to my grandparent’s room.
Snores drifted out, reverberating and rumbling, sounding a lot like giant, growling pigs.
“So bored!” I thought out loud “I wish something would happen!”
Then, as if by divine intervention, something did happen:
My grandmother’s snores started changing. The grunts and snorts started sounding like deep gasps.
Boredom and curiosity got me: I walked to the half-ajar door, and stared in. My eyes adjusting.
Light from the living room fell upon my grandmother’s body, which was wrapped like a corpse.
Her gargling snores inflated and deflated the sheet around her mouth.
As I was wondering how horrendous it would probably smell, the breaths got more gaspy.
Puffing and heaving, her head cocked back, searching for oxygen, with each breath.
I wasn’t a medical student then, but I knew this was not a good sign.
I stood there, transfixed. I wanted to see with my own eyes, for the first time, the angel of death drag somebody’s soul out of their body.
Had I been closer to my grandma, I would’ve called for help.
Gradually, the gasps got more and more wheezy, with the whole body straining to keep air moving in and out of her lungs.
Then, very suddenly, she started convulsing. The seizure shook her body like a plane in turbulence.
I held my breath, stunned, watching this woman’s death throes.
Within seconds, the seizure stopped just as abruptly as it began.
Her last breath left her body in a final sigh.
The room fell silent. She moved no more.
“This is it. This is how a person dies.” I thought, with my heart-pounding, mouth dry, and eyes wide open.
I observed her lifeless corpse. The white sheet outlining her open mouth.
“GRRRRRR” came a sound. She started snoring again!
“Huh?” I said out loud. “What the fuck?” – as my mind raced, backtracked, and replayed everything to try to comprehend this.
Then, nausea erupted within me like a volcano, as confusion turned to the realization that I had just watched my grandmother masturbate to orgasm.