Sequined gowns fit when I was young,
their sparkles stitched from TV static.
Sheets draped the skin when TV
went off for the night or the set broke.

TV does not go off ever anymore.
But I can’t watch it or the night’s middle
pressed against my own. The tree
in the window makes me turn

to Paradise. That’s the tree’s name—
the same name my grandma gave a pine
past her window. Her home is sold,
her tree, gone. To me, at least.

Paradise has wide branches—
“a place to sleep,” my grandma said
before losing speech and sight.
I hang on, bare before the afterlife.