My grandmother held life so close
she squeezed it to her hundredth year
her back room lined with disaster

fortified in piles of postcards, photos,
bags of tiny pink shells, places she went
once, maybe twice. Furs ringing the necks

of hangers, sweaters, stockings, suits.
Bed-pans, Band-Aids, have nots, what ifs
collected, tucked in coat pockets.

Endless strawberry jams, dilly pickles, blood-red
beets in dusty, dark jars sealed with wax.
She kept cross-stitched ration books

from the year my mother was born
the year she learned to start seedlings
from garbage scraps, from when she signed

onto the clean plate club, the tire patch club,
when silverware grew scarce, when sugar
and flour were luxuries, when ration points

equaled a slice of security, of safety, of bread.
She always said make it do or do without.
But that was a lie. She kept everything. Just in case.

Karen Elizabeth Sharpe is from Rutland, Massachusetts, where she lives with her partner and two pandemic rescue dogs. Karen is a poetry editor at The Worcester Review and author of Prayer Can Be Anything, (Finishing Line Press) and This Late Afternoon (Dunn & Co.). Her poems have or will soon appear in On the Seawall, The MacGuffin, SWWIM Fourth River, Split Rock Review, Mom Egg Review, and Halfway Down the Stairs, among others.