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My aunt is 103-years-old. She writes

about her relationship with God,

 

I write about my father.

Her apartment sighs with objets d’art,

 

a stone horse rears up in the hallway,

kicking up ancient Greek dust.

 

Paintings oil walls. I long to remove

my shoes and pad around in socks.

 

I step past a gold-legged console table,

a box of delicate petit-fours sucrés

 

in my shopping bag – there’s family

coming to tea.

 

She raises her voice at my second-rate

choice of patisserie,

 

but tells me my poems are like diving

into an unknown yet very close soul.