I don’t ask Grandma why she always sleeps in the illuminated family room
with an olive-toned blanket cocooned around her
at ten o’clock in the morning.

Instead, I ask her to play Bugs Bingo,
that game she’d bought me for my eighth birthday.
The black widows on the bingo board make my skin crawl,
but I sit cross-legged from Grandma
as she reminisces over the spider infestation
that she had in her childhood summer house.

I don’t ask her why she flees to the back porch
to smoke yet another cigarette,
and I surely won’t tell her that smoking leads to lung cancer,
like Grandpa’s had.

So I sit on a plastic, foldable lawn chair
with my hands underneath the cushions
and fight the urge to swat at the bee buzzing at my ankles
because Grandma exhales a cloud of smoke
while describing the time she’d whacked the honey bee’s nest
and sprinted to the paltin tree with my Grandpa in hand.

I take these moments while I can
because most Sundays,
I tug on her arm, there's not a grunt
or a groan
or a yawn-

So instead, I tuck the blanket over her bare feet
and shut the curtain drapes closed.
With a faint kiss to Grandma’s forehead,
I leave her to sleep through the rest of the morning
within her smothering cocoon.