
Typhoon Season
Here, I said to my grandmother,
attaching the new house keys
to my grandfather’s pocketknife.
We had changed the locks again
that week, and the week before that.
A week later, she lost the pocketknife.
My grandmother began to lose her keys
after my grandfather died.
I should have known she would.
We found a can of Spam in a flowerpot
by the TV, a roll of bills in another next to the shower,
then bottle caps but none of the bottles nearest the main door.
We never had flowers indoors except
the night of the typhoon when we brought
all my grandmother’s orchids inside.
Not we, but the men of the family, my grandfather showing them
how to gently pry the roots from the driftwood, before the power went out
and wind whipped up anything we didn’t hold down. The rain fell for days.
My grandfather built the house
where seven people and a dozen orchids huddled.
He knew where to look for damage as soon as the sky cleared.
He swept the leaves before my grandmother woke,
returned the orchids to their garden,
remembered where each one belonged.
I found the pocketknife on my grandfather’s dresser
a month or two after the funeral. I prised the corkscrew he used on wine bottles
when we were all together for New Year’s, birthdays.
It was, I thought, too solid to misplace,
unlike the laced ribbons strung so my grandmother
could wear her keys instead of setting them down.
When I asked her when she last saw
my grandfather’s pocketknife, my grandmother said
she didn’t know, she didn’t know he had a knife.