636 Lyons Avenue, Apartment 1A

By Andrea Hollander

My grandparents chewed
with their mouths open.
I knew better than to mention it.
My mother, who’d grown up
in that apartment,
would not have approved
and would have given me
one of her knowing looks.
Stripped of hope this time
that she’d ever leave the hospital,
I’d come to eat with them,
these two who that evening
knew themselves
only as her parents
but seemed more like children
learning for the first time
appropriate behavior
as they sat at the Formica table,
paper napkins on their laps,
the meat on their plates cut
into tiny digestible pieces.