I Realize Too Late This Was a Test

My grandmother is a newborn puppy
curled up between hospital bed guardrails.
The surgeon tried plumbing her arteries —
she clawed her way off the table. Soft
white fuzz on wrinkled pink flesh,
eyes not yet open, she whimpers
now and then. I leave, citing a 3-hour drive,
the setting sun. When I call the next day,
Dad hands her the phone. She asks him,
What should I say? Her birthday
card sits on my nightstand, unopened. I don’t want
the money. One year, I asked for a letter instead.
Tell me about your life; she didn’t understand
what I wanted. All of her
black toes get taken; little cigarette butts
litter the porch. Dad says she fell in the night —
her roommate saw her standing there
naked, saying nothing. I need
cash for the tailor. I open the card
but it’s empty inside. I go when both her legs
are gone. She’s so small I can’t tell
what’s missing beneath the blankets.
I waited with her that first procedure,
her head on my chest, tracing the knots of her spine.
I don’t know what we’re waiting for now.
I close my hand over the doorknob
of her shoulder. Stay five minutes. Write
ten in the guest log. Drive in search of a latte.
Her glasses are in her purse, hanging
up by Dad’s front door, sympathy
cards lining the entryway shelf.
I watch him doze on the couch after dinner.
All the nights she must have watched his chest
rising and falling. Then it was his turn,
she in the bed, he in the chair. I wonder
how to tell him. I hope
I will do better next time.