There are many things
I told Grandmother
While she looks
Through her glasses.
For one,
the death we expected
but did not come
is the worst torture
known to man.
But she just reads
me through thick round frames,
and whispers to me,
this too will pass away.
She answered back,
her eyes unwinking behind
the rose-colored lenses,
that we are in a world
where there is no forever,
just short-lived romances.
That lovers cannot think
of only the room
where they hide
and seek privacy;
but also the world that gossips
and awakens us
to our own sinfulness.
That she thought
men never lied
but would only unfold like truth
slowly, until it is too late.
Her pupils confirmed all this –
through the glasses touching her eyebrows
and the folds under her eyes.
I tried putting on
her eyeglasses
to see things the way she does
but the world remains the same,
just magnified.
And so I learned –
what will make me see
is not the glasses
but my own eyes.