mentioned raze you still dream of her house sometimes. but never with her in it. you think it must be because you haven't seen each other in a quarter of a century. her absence makes a different kind of sense when you find the obituary online. she was more than twice as old as you are now. you wonder when she started perming her hair and staining it so the grey wouldn't show. it must have been before you were born. you search for yourself among the lesser weeds. your sisters are here. so too are the cousins who were cruel to you when you were a child. but you're nowhere. the account of her life is as barren as her bed. no mention is made of the name you gave this woman that everyone else hastened to claim as their own. when you were new enough to the world that words could weigh you down, you saw her wearing a navy blue jumpsuit. blue grandma, you said. and it stuck like a burr in her featherweight fur. she wasn't dorothy anymore. she was blue grandma. everyone else called her that until the day she died. you tried a time or two to reclaim the authorship you'd been denied. but who would believe a child who found his friends in books after the monsters that made him ground him down to dust? even those who know the truth would sooner lie to paint themselves in a better light. you learned that lesson early. the only one who would vouch for you is gone now, forever blue in a dream without end. 260117 what's it to you? who go blather from