MY GRANDMOTHER BREAKS HER HIP

My grandmother says we've brought her here to die.
Her broken bone picks under our fingernails,
a splintered stick splitting the tissue-beds, prying us apart.
We give her pills for our pain. Her cataracts cloud over her,
but she can see old blood on the ceiling of the state hospital.

My mother is wrung out; the guilt stretches across her bed,
nesting on sheets of the unsigned hospital plan.
The doctor at the clinic tells my uncle hip operations
cost hundreds of thousands; old people don't make it that far.
My mother says we've put a price on my grandmother.

—Saaleha Idrees Bamjee [https://cutt.ly/CWiu0y3]