I don’t know what to buy my grandmother.
At eighty-three, she surrounds herself
with trinkets she can no longer see:

shelves of bells, glass angels, spoons,
porcelain boxes, tiny vases, thimbles,
carvings, candles, embroidered flowers.

Her sight blurs. She can’t read.
She knows what’s coming: She watched
the same darkness absorb her father.

This year, I examine suncatchers and frames
and paperweights. I can’t buy anything.
I imagine each item coming back to me

a few years later. As I shop, I wonder
the question I can never ask: How does it feel
to be so close to darkness?