I’d never touched my grandmother’s forehead
on the day we found her passed out,
but I wanted to try.

My father had found it noteworthy that she was still warm,
and my four year old mind didn’t know why it mattered,
but it didn’t really wonder either.

I documented her temperature with my own palm,
skipped around the square floor plan,
then checked her head again and again

until my mother finally commanded me to stop,
at the last,
right before the skin grew cold.

I still don’t know what the dead feel like.
All I’ve learned since then is what it’s like to actually
notice when you’re feeling someone slowly die.

first published in Blood+Honey