Ownership

My mother's uncle is dying. My father's father is also dying. They die together, three hours apart without traffic. Uncle slipped on a slab of ice on the pink kitchen floor, his ankle perpendicular to its usual position. Now saline solution flattens like a tube of toothpaste into his remaining days. I, nineteen years old, bend in front of him, say my name. He blinks abstractly. Eyes remind me of the kitchen floor, of the sandy walls, of the laundry dripping on hauling strings into this salty soil of Ahmedabad. He says I look just like my mother. My grandfather is also dying. One eye looks at my feet and the other to my neck. I remember he is the father of the father I had many years ago, and he is dying too, in another country. He has not seen his son in years. In these owl-eyes I cannot place I see my uncle dying in the last sunset, in the golden-orange good night. I see his hand against the tan and brown checkered boards, his fingers swollen against marbles, the red grip on a cricket bat. He says I look just like my father. I say we see what we need to see when we are dying, and this is my proof. This is God dusting off the edges before he sends Death in, this is all going according to plan. I look in the mirror, knowing this. Dying lurches in me as if it is my time, as if I am stone against the skins of a river. I think vaguely of being alive, being born. But my mother's cheeks are pinned against my father's eyes, my mother's eyebrows guard her nose, my father's forehead overtakes my mother's silken hair. I realize I am made up of dead and dying. I take a pair of scissors from the kitchen counter. I cut apart my body's sides, set them on the gleaming floor, and watch them fight, popcorn in the microwave.