What I Remember, Perhaps not Accurately, About My Grandmother in the Last Few Months Before She Died

Tobacco stains the inside of two fingers,
nails still strong, tapered, painted
an off-white shade that glistens.
She raises the cigarette to lips
thinned and ridged with age.
Her stained teeth an ugly yellow, like the walls
of her kitchen, yellow
of a fading bruise, yellow
that shades the whites of her eyes
casts a shadow of illness on skin.

She smells, faintly, of rot.

Cancer riddles her pancreas
hidden between stomach and spine, nestled
in the curve of intestine.
A scrum of cells swirl, clump,
scour the painful red of dying tissue.

We sit at her kitchen table.
She tells me she loves me,
her mouth more grimace than smile.