It's 5 pm
She runs the faucet and fresh water bathes her prune-like hands
The small room is pungent with fried garlic and steamy oil coming from the kitchen
It's Sunday: the day for making dolmas,
delicious stuffed grape leaves
At 5:13 she begins to complain
about the heat
and her heart pain
and her heart, in general
Everything in her aches, and everything burns
like the meat that's beginning to pop out of the pan;
it's the only pot that's not empty.
I turn off the heat at 5: 21.
My eyes burn, stinging with flavor
She clunks down a bowl of fried meat and rice and vegetables;
They are her pens,
the utensils she uses to keep records
She finally unravels the freshly picked grape leaves
and the history lesson begins
It's 5:30.
She first explains that she has been making dolmas since she was my age
Stuffing each grape leaf with memories from a 5:30 pm 60 years ago
Her fingers are thicker now, dry and lined
"With pain", she smiles, "but mostly love"
Love that has mixed itself with dirt and worms
Her stove clock announces that it's 5:54
The first half of the meat is gone and
her cat tries to catch a crow outside,
Yet the creature can't see anything,
he only has the light of a lonely moon.
I plunge deeper into the bowl of rice,
wondering at each story from her past that she recounts
5:48.
She swam with silver fish in the lake near her house
They were
Smooth,
icy
and wonderful,
Her mother scolded her each time she brought a squirming creature home
Now, after her heart surgery, she only guts the fish.
caressing their brokenness as she spills their insides on the small kitchen counter
It's already 6:27.
I have already made 14 dolmas of my own
She tells me that she studied butterflies at her university
She caught them
and observed them
and wrote papers on them
Their fleeting wings beating through any gust of wind or flower patch
Now, after her hair began to fall out, she only dreams of butterflies
Catching them only as far as to save a picture of a monarch for the background of her computer
Her body is hurting too much and I must finish the dolmas as she goes in to rest
It's 7:02
I wash all of the dishes, satisfied that they're finally clean
She always insisted that she washed the plates and pots
but,
with her pain,
her dishes were never fully clean.
7:10.
I'm done drying everything and I file them into their respective cabinets
Cabinets filled with dust and old photographs
Old photographs that were more clearly seen before medicine bottles raided their landscape
Invading their way into her vision, and everyone's periphery
7:14.
I hug my grandfather goodbye and knock on her door
She's not feeling well enough to open
7:15
Pain and love, I remember her saying
Pain and love
7:17
The prepared dolmas sit in a pile on her kitchen, uncooked.
They'll never be cooked, never enjoyed
7:18.
I walk into my mom's car: she's been waiting outside for 5 minutes
7:19
I turn up the car's radio so its sound can suffocate my tears

It's 1:34 pm some weeks later.
I smell garlic and oil;
the smell clings to my clothes, apparently,
But the smell doesn't come from there--
not that tiny kitchen
I listen to the sermon drone on
and we sing about some saints and how they came marching in
I picture that pungent kitchen
and then I grab for a handful of meat, veggies, and rice
I want to stuff a dolma and paint it underneath her epitaph
For my grandma, smitten too early from a disease that never knew her but overcame her
gone forever
who's love,
right now at 1:34,
brings me great pain.