Granny Claire

I remember Blanche Claire as a crazy old woman big as a man sitting in a padded chair, and wonder what she must see and understand, now that she in some dim south-end room lies gasping out every cigarette, in some greasy secondhand bed coughing out a voice she's never been taught to use on her behalf. Did she suspect that some foul seed, a broken, growing, twisting thing, lay in her unsteady womb and curled against her spine, or perceive this way and circumstance would lead her to these desperate days, this half-completed house? Her one-time fresh and open soul bared to the world as if ripped by a knife and boned, that factory minded people have locked and stoned, fearful of her dark, implacable moods, her vision and intent to bring to a stagnant world some action that could wear away every complacent look, almost any tedious day. An entire life unheard brutalized and ignored and locked in a brick cell high above the swirl and curling waters of the reversing falls. But by her fading end she has become, sickness bolted to a bed, when at one time nothing could have escaped her glittering eye, her wide, white hand. She's the only one of us to still face the world unadorned and unafraid, that even at the choking end of her life, would attempt to tear from her face the mask and though die, die exposing to the supported and secure what's she's seen forever and endured, a greasy layer on every cleanly sort. As on the ledge a caveman waits, then here on the other side of time Blanche Claire must stand, exemplify and contend with the violent beauty of our world, the grit and dusty wind.