An Afternoon Nap

At the house of Granma Grace artefacts line each shelf. 

There's a lady in a yellow dress, she's been waltzing for years – decades – caught in a turn, petticoats fixed in a spin - she looks to her absent partner. 

There's a lady in festive red, and three more china beauties above dressed for spring, delicate, all looking to an absent return of gaze. 

On the room's highest shelf a china couple are fixed, blue and white, a dab of yellow, an accordion on his lap, they both look ahead. Toby jugs flank them, one has a roughly groomed beard. 

Below, in her adjustable chair, Granma nods her head in sleep. 

Myself, sat on the sofa adjacent, I would not pick out her life in figurines. I would think of a tablecloth - something just as pretty with cotton lace, with embroidered flowers, with variable shades of white where food stains had been scrubbed out, where one of us had spilt ketchup, another had splashed wine. 

Today I heated her breakfast milk, she ate her warmed cornflakes with the bowl on a lap tray, in her adjustable chair.

Granma Grace sleeps. 

Pigeons flock to the bird feeder she had set up outside. For now she does not watch them, nor comment on who prefers which seed mix nor tut when the crow noise scares them off. 

She is fast asleep, and could be anywhere.