Breakfast With Grandma
The cafe likes to watch
our little movie scene.
Her smile, no act,
decaf clutched tight
like a blanket from
this world that
confuses her.
Porcelain queen,
the golden seams speak
of a life before–
“Are you visiting Lacrosse for Easter?”
she’s so small now
in the booth, looking down
to cornfields and classrooms
lost in floorboard fissures.
I might gather each shred
of hashbrown from the ground,
pressing together a cup
her hands have forgotten.
“Are you visiting Lacrosse for Easter?”
I want to tell her
I’m sorry–
for the words I said
as a boy. I wonder
if she remembers at all.
Tinkling cutlery–
the word ready tolls
like a bell. The pen trembles
in these hands.
“Are you visiting Lacrosse for Easter?”
I’m not ready.
We dance between tables,
toward the entrance, or
the exit–
morning fog frames her
beyond the car window,
waving
as if the glass longed
to take her picture.
I’ll never be ready.
Gunnar Olstad is a poet whose work investigates intimate, often everyday moments as a means of exploring memory, identity, and perception. His writing emphasizes clarity and restraint, relying on precise imagery rather than overt statements to generate meaning. Concerned with the capacity of language to shape emotional experience, his practice reflects an ongoing engagement with questions of form, attention, and representation. He is the host of the Read or Die reading series, and an editor for UW Whitewater’s The Muse.
