Pretty Girl

I was that dancing, blushing child, picture-perfect shrub,
And in an instant acquired lashings of my grandfather's love.
We called him Pup, his liver-spotted, somewhat balding mind,
blended trickles of the fantasia I never left behind.
 
He'd wet my cheek with kisses that soon would fall to my hand,
and ate by the coal, in his sweater-vests that no heating could withstand.
The red lights of his little car meant danger more so than his breaking,
Which meant until very close to now our whole family was mistaken.
 
He'd call me his little "pretty girl", from 3 to 9 to 13,
and every time I’d take for granted the close and far between.
Pup would appear without a doubt sooner than I’d arrived,
that's why his Sunday papers were all that really survived.
 
I'd seen it in the pastel colours that defined his later days,
the nurses and the cleaners that didn't appreciate what he says.
I remember still that phone call that really brought my eyes to brim,
and it wasn't that of fatality yet, just the utter lack of him.
 
To see him slip into the ground, as light-rain paved the bed,
left little thought about that of the dementia in his head.
I could see his headstone sitting and wondered why it had missed,
"She loves you, yes, your pretty girl. The one you always kissed".