From a manuscript in progress.

I used to think my grandmother peed pink.

I would think it sitting on the toilet, hers,

I was sure she had visited last. When the lid was up

I smelled pink. A kind of bitter melon,

more medicine than astringent. The bowl was filled

shallowly with it, a kind of cloudy grapefruit

milk I encountered only there. Virginia

through the little frilly curtains. The handtowels,

too, were pink, the clamshell soaps, the apron

about the commode, the tissue box a sort of

abalone flesh. The oil of olay jar

had shoulders like hers. Until I was finished

I feasted on everything, aspirin to rose.

I splashed my gender into hers. My mother’s

mother. It wouldn’t yellow. It would suds.