Grandmother's Stories

She told her stories in the language of her hands,
the gestures filling in what words could not—
the demon larger than she could describe,
the hero braver than any school had taught.

We sat in the circle of her lamplight,
pulled close by the particular gravity of her voice,
the dark outside the room made safe by story,
the night turned into something we could choose.

I carry those stories still, half-remembered—
the plots are gone but the feeling remains,
the feeling of being held inside a story
that the teller loved and that the listening claims.
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