Everyday
there are moments of silence
with my grandmother on the wheelchair.

They come at points when
I feel she is least in control;

when I tell her to move her feet for the elevator door,
when our neighbors, strangers, run ahead to open doors for us,
when people move their chairs at the sight of us at restaurants,
when I help to lift her out of her moving seat
into a real one.

She stops all conversations,
stories about her past, her late sons and daughter—
I never realized how many children she has lost
already, before my time, before my birth

she was loved.

Now, as she only knows to give love
I ponder at these moments of silence,
these moments of when her fading brown eyes
want to slip even further into the less laborious
blind-eye blues around the iris.

I ponder at the glint
of the metallic surfaces these moments involve,
the cold iron elevator door,
the silver of the wheelchair handles;

does she, or do I see
on the reflections on these things,
the portraits of her final loss?