Listening  is  an  act  greater  than  not  talking, which is itself a great act. In my grandma’s apartment, I pressed my lips together and took in her world (pillboxes and photos albums, pickle jars turned soup containers) and tried to forget my own

The Search for My Grandma's Fourteenth Summer

It takes two trains to get to my grandma’s place, a senior center with a warm-water pool and bingo twice a week. When I arrive, my grandma’s face lights up as if it’s been years, as if I hadn’t called the day before to say I was coming.

On Writing My Grandma’s Story & Reading It Back to Her

Mallory has better places to be. It’s not true—she’s an eighth grader with exactly nowhere to go—but it’s what she keeps thinking, what she wishes for herself. At least she got her dad to back out of being a field trip chaperone.

Mallory and the Hologram

On my birthday, my grandma loses her speech. Her caregiver thinks it might be a stroke. She is rushed to the ER and I visit her there hours later when her speech has returned and she uses it to introduce me to the nurse. She’s Romanian, she tells me

Swimming with My Grandma

1. To pierce my ears. All she needs is a needle, ice cube and potato. I imagine it goes ice cube first, then needle, then potato. I say no.
2. To give me money. Do I need money? There’s a twenty-dollar bill in her purse.

Offers My Grandma Has Made Me

I am trying to teach my brother Micah to write poetry. I don't want him becoming one of those tape measure men, coiling inward, showing nothing to no one. He’s only fourteen, but he's at risk. 

The Structure Underneath

A bell dings. A woman hands over her husband’s shirt, torn at the shoulder, and another woman, a woman with the same first name as my middle name, takes it and says come back Thursday.

Brooke Randel

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