It’s been a long time since I’ve seen
those red dyed pistachios, 
the kind that stained your fingers
with the blood of Sepastia,
my grandmother said,
and I knew what she meant:
our ancestral home obliterated in 1915.
 
Forty years have passed
since I sat in her kitchen,
at the table with the checkered
red and white tablecloth,
and fire engine red kettle
humming on the stove.
 
The apartment now vanished,
the whole building, gone
up in yellow and red smoke,
smoldering in the shadow
of the 3rd Avenue El—
now a flat empty space,
Bathgate Avenue Community Garden,
printed in red letters on a white sign 
on the chicken wire fence.
 
Gone, too, the blue, gold, and red
oriental carpets, white lace doilies,
the candlestick phone she never replaced,
the faded blankets, and sagging mattress
I slept on during overnight visits.
 
Those same nights she gave me
the special goat’s milk soap
to wash the red stains from my fingers,
holding my hand in hers,
the faded blue tattoos 
of a cross and her name in Armenian
done when she was just a girl
still visible on her hand—
her skin thin as water, rich as blood.