At night, my grandmother’s house flowers
into not one but many palaces
—her shingles suddenly sandstone ramparts,

Doric columns sprouting in the driveway,
front door buckling into a portico,
gables burgeoning into pediments

engraved with scenes from our family mythology,
patio erupting with walls and towers,
their domes and spires rising toward the stratosphere—

Hellenistic temples and Gothic cathedrals
wallowing in an orgy
of Baroque façades and Victorian gingerbread.

The parlor windows have changed to stained glass
dyed cobalt-blue and copper-red.
Demigods and heroes pose in marble and porphyry

while ancestors of jasper or jade
preen themselves from across a hall of mirrors.
A library, a scriptorium, and a music room

appear from nowhere. I spy
a set of viols, intricately carved
with further scenes from our family mythology.

Upstairs, my room adjoins a Turkish bath.
A canopy of soft, pink samite unfurls
like the inside of a conch shell.

In the bathrooms, mosaics sparkle with lapis lazuli.
Where is my grandmother in all this?
She insists

on total seclusion in the attic
which is bare except for a yellowing mattress
and, in the rafters, the flickering shadows

of an ancient colony of vampire bats.
But sometimes, when the whole family convenes
in the chapel or the banquet hall,

she glides unnoticed among the benches
and the corners of her mouth twitch upwards
in something like a smile.

No one mentions the grave
she must have clawed her way out of. It’s as though
she never died, was never borne

from church to family plot.
We never placed those roses on her casket
or lowered her slowly into fresh, damp earth.

My mother laughs uneasily. Are we
all dead? Is this someone’s idea of hell?
When I wake up, I remember

it might just as easily have been a vision of Paradise.

[Editor’s Note: Publication of this poem was made possible by a gift from Jordan Hirsch during our annual Kickstarter.]