Grandmother

There is a photo of her on the sideboard.
A black and white image, framed
with cardboard covered in brown age spots.
She was always old, weathered,

carrying the look of a farmer's wife
dressed for best. She has no foretelling
on her face of the potent mix of her mind,
no future hint of the mud flinging madness

that came before the white jacket
and the echoy corridors of Kingseat, the keys
that locked her away, the drugs
that stole the spark from her eyes

and limped her hand so it could not swipe
at some imagined wrongdoing.
She was a matriarch, a powerful woman

who years after the death of her love,
after the cracking of her mind,
passed away in a ward with a small bed
and a bedside table that held her glasses.