my grandparents’ house is empty

written by Annie Wu

photos shot by Joy Xing, modeled by @bbmelx

The Grief Exponent

Time that eats our lives for breakfast: oatmeal dusted 

with hourglass sand, webs of needle thin sugar strands 

woven between our memories. Grief that is love metastasized,

love that outgrew its own purpose and ate its own way 

through our minds. Whisper-quiet, we stared into the face of 

infinity, an expanse that even the shoulders of atlas could 

not bear. Backed by the weight of the wake and the funeral,

the eulogy that i could not bring myself to cry at; still numb 

and too cold. I loved her but i could only remember her in childlike 

wonder, rose glasses and the glare of stardust; a monochrome 

memory of a woman offset by her own brilliance, red clay and 

blooming poppies— it was her once, i swear. I remembered her 

careful fingers and shuffling feet moving slow and careful, molasses,

sweet and syrupy as if she had all the time in the world cradled 

in her weathered palms. She left behind only the imprint of stardust, 

iron that bled into her core and ate itself out, a star killer. Years later,  

when i try to reminisce watching her supernova cut light into existence at

the breakfast table, i am blinded by the reflection of stark, white emptiness 

where i forget how the warmth of her hands used to feel, wondering

when time will also eat away the face of her. Bereft (again.)

First published in Just Poetry!! The National Poetry Quarterly

denouement

thought about endings first when I was five

endings to picture books and my first foray 

into the magic treehouse, a time travel narrative

that i clutched between my fingers.

thought about death first when I was six

grandfather died, and I’d only ever seen him once

too young to really understand the weight of it

the gravity of permanence and missing what you will never have again.

thought again about the idea of a time travel narrative,

a memory of him as the old man in the rocking chair,

eating chocolate cookies until chocolate got on his frail fingers 

and around his mouth, a smile.

it is only remembrance I still have left of him and

even then his face is blurry, a stranger really

so sometimes death tastes like chocolate to me

like cocoa butter and malted brownies 

like nostalgia in the cradle of a rocking chair

milano cookies and sweet sugar 

a moment suspended in time

i bake cookies as if i could bake his smile into existence again

relive that moment that already slips out my hands 

searching for his face in wood grain, a stranger’s face conjured by a distant memory

sometimes i wish forgetting was not part of being human.