Seventy-five and counting

We didn't question her about the minor complaints,
we didn't trouble ourselves with her grieveances
or with whomever over she was grieving;
we didn't ask about those years that tumbled past before we did.
Years that didn't exist -
being composed of impossible numbers;
myths that only served to sell history books;
history books that were only stories written for us,
to keep us entertained,
that we wouldn't have to ask any real questions:

she was always this age,
she was always this grandmother,
she didn't understand computers;
we patted her on the head
with pots of tea and told her not to worry:
it was difficult to learn new technologies,
it was difficult to live through wars,
to live in poverty,
to watch one's relatives die,
and to lower the body of the only man she ever loved into the ground;
into a ground she had been slave to
for the best part of a century,
a century that never existed,
a century covered in tarmac
and soft veils of litter
with use-by dates stretching further and further into an ever patronising future.

She buried her tears into a ground that still listened,
into the only feature still recognisable
or that still understood;
and the lines of ploughed fields were the lines of her brow
or her brow was the furrowed fields,
was her timeline;
and as the fields were turned over to make way for new high rises
so she rolled over into a ready-made grave
of which we had the sheets off ready,
the pillows plumped up:
we wanted to make this as easy for her as possible
and write about our loss on the internet.