Ma

She grasped my stiffly.
I am the horse-haired stuffed horse on wheels.
Affection awkward to bestow.
Those pooled-water eyes
deep with the worried weight of blinkered youth.
I close my face into her warm chest under that
navy woollen-worn jumper, infused with decades of pruning.
Creased, shrunken skin-boned hands hold me still.
I shrink beneath her curved cancerous body,
hunched over past suppression.
My grandmother's frailty supports my future fears.