my grandmother went to italy 

& brought back only two pictures.
she removed them from her purse 
like playing cards. one of her, 
standing beside the leaning tower of pisa.
another of her made small next to
the vatican. she told us 
she didn't like it there like she thought she would.
it had been decades since she'd gone. a life time. 
i wasn't old enough to ask her more. 
the pictures told a story of how
our homes shift without us. i could have asked
who held the camera for both pictures.
if she asked a passerby. i could have asked
if she had been lonely there-- if she remembered 
the language or if it had vanished over the years.
every word is the ghost of who taught it to you.
a portrait of her mother & aunt hung in her apartment.
the two of them in italy in lovely ruffled dresses.
they would climb onto a boat & become
transformed by water. my grandmother was 
an apostrophe of a woman. 
the wind walked through her. in the rain 
she wore a plastic bonnet. in the heat she flicked a fan.
i can see her ambling on the outskirts 
of a tour group. all of them laughing.
all of them young & forgetful. even the old ones
feel young to her. she said to us
that she didn't need to go back again.
she stacked the two pictures.
tucked them away in her purse & 
i've never seen them since. 
they slipped away somewhere between 
the nursing home & the apartment.
she remembered less & less of italy
until it became a symbol. the world can become
very tight very quickly. the photographs
float somewhere face-up. maybe there are people
who held her camera who hold the cameras
of other lonely tourists
searching for something they cannot name.
i would like to be one of them.
to take just two pictures 
& then tuck them away.