Because she wore black socks with a cherry
muumuu and never cared about bringing
sexy back. And when she needed extra light
to see, a nurse to dress her, sons to pay
bills, when her heart was failing with

everything else in her ninety-year-old
soul, after her prize tomato patch had long been
dead, smothered beneath the weatherworn
satellite dish; the only sculpture she cherished
in a backyard of weeds now growing rampant

where renegade foxes pilfered through bramble
and snacked on her mysterious missing chickens,
outside the house with carpets worn thin
holes eaten through the planked floorboards
that lined the kitchen with a pantry still

stocked to the brim, bags full of flour and salt
as though she might mold dough into our
favorite Lambropsomo at any moment
when the mood would strike, even though her hands
were too frail to knead bread—I loved my mother—
in-law for her ability to see through the bullshit
in life. For swearing at the plumber in her native
tongue when he overcharged for services rendered.
For the day she pushed the tattoo-armed guy
in front of her, out of line saying he had more
time to dillydally than she did and for one

evening in August, the night my husband's brother
died, when she punched my sister-in-law
in the nose, crying someone should have done
that a long time ago and maybe he wouldn’t
have given up on life anywhere near as easily.