Last Night I Dreamed They All Blamed Me

Kakie Pate

My grandfather, laying,
humming like a low branch
in early wind. Together, the morning
sun and I pay a visit to his room.
It smells of a bamboo forest, I embrace
the oxygen.
                            His sheets blizzard—
even in the storm, he finds my hand.
I ask him how he’s doing.
It is deep summer, the fever month,
the fallen season, but still the linen
of his shirt, like him, is unwrinkled,
pristine. Against the near window,
the wind brushes a chrysanthemum
in bloom. If I were French,
I would have known. He replies
better now with a squeeze.

Kakie Pate has an MFA in poetry from Emerson College. She has worked as the head poetry editor for the literary journal Redivider as well as a social media manager and reader for Autofocus. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in DIALOGIST Journal, Rock & Sling, Poet Lore, and Entropy, among others. A native Virginian, she currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts with her sheltie Dusty.