Till that moment,
my grandmother was a commoner.
One fall and a broken disc,
she metamorphosed into a Han Empress
Her eyes swam like fish,
in her thick lenses her ample frame
now leaned on a stick,
she moved at home in imperial rounds.
With an ease that defied our peace,
she made us slaves with her shrill commandments.
She broke our spines with constant errands
and bled our souls with the sting of words.
She raided into our private time,
noting our escapades by the clock’s chime
and paraded our naked selves
in the street of her wintry eyes.
In between she buried us alive
digging out one by one as she pleased.
Unable to revolt we froze
our tongues and survived.
Soon there were reports
and our neighborhood took pity on us
and told her so.
Treason she shouted and we were court martialed.
But before we could be shot,
revolt erupted in the far flung frontiers
of her empire.
First her proletarian legs struck work,
then factories in her belly locked their gates,
and her blood cells refused to fight the invaders
by dark entering their ranks.
As she fell we pronounced her dead
and gave her a decent send off
in the cemetery of our church.
We cried and cried
we had lost our Han empress grandmother
and peacefully started again
eating our bread