heather {2} cb

Soft hands, worn like leather. Folds in their paperback binding with sun spots that tell a thousand stories. Nurse uniforms with hems above my knees that were too cold for winter's nights curled up on a cot in my grandmother's room. We used to live in a big mansion with golden banisters an tapestries sewn with silver thread, but I was far too small to care for her as her age began to creep up like the purple veins protruding fro the backs of her hands. I don't mind losing it all- grandma says I'm as good as royalty anyway. Nights when she and her knitting club have had one glass of wine too many, she tells me what that means. Bastard of a wealthy, powerful family. Her daughter was a maid with the stars in her eyes- blinded by a man who used her like the toys I used to keep in a chest at the foot of my bed (until I grew too old and grandma made me throw them away.) My father paid my grandmother to take me away, he'd kill me otherwise she said. I don't know if that's true. I like to think he was better than that. 

Grandma says I'll get the old house, once she's gone. That I should stay there instead of watching her crackle and break and begin to turn to dust. But every night I sleep with the sound of her heartbeat, shrill and angry in my ears. The monitor is keeping her alive as long as it can. It is eerie, to be the only girl living in a house of the dying.