The Braid
gramma's hands were big and doughy and restless they crocheted a garden on muslin for my bed brewed strong black tea shuffled the deck for solitaire
an old woman's hands
but once they had been pale and light and held a tortoise shell brush once they held a tortoise shell brush while she sat before a mirror brushing her long wheat hair her thick wheat hair that I knew only gray except in the braid she wove from her brush leavings the braid she gave to me so I would always remember--
before the ten pregnancies and five miscarriages before the four children she raised and the daughter who disappeared before the five grandchildren and the great-grandchildren before
she was a woman
wheat colored