My grandma read books and breathed in equal measure.

From the day I turned thirteen on, she took every opportunity to tell me how sexy my legs were. “Just like your mom’s.”

She said what she damn well felt like saying.

Somewhere between her milky way addiction and my 18th birthday,

She began to lose her words

A year and a half ago

She gave me her copy of the complete works of shakespeare.

I held it and asked

“Don’t you need this?”

I was in the other room when she stopped breathing, not countries away like I had been days before. I walked to that room, which had been near silent, and opened the door to a wave of noise.