These Things Pass

[Achebe]

These Things Pass
 
My aunt Lottie lived to be one hundred and two,
she drank her coffee as watery
as the eyes of some of her friends,
or the amount of oil to salt water
we were getting when we finally
closed downed the oil leases,
precipitating me to leave town
and move far away.
The next time I saw her,
was some years later.
She met me at the door unafraid,
(Thank god they'd taken her guns away)
telling me she knew what I wanted,
and that she was dialing 9-1-1.
She had been my favorite aunt,
my only aunt really.
She used to come and take me
to the "Corner Drug Store"
and buy me tuna fish sandwiches
on toasted bread and a coke
mixed the old fashioned way,
but just like the Easter Bunny,
These Things Pass.
 
erthona
 
©2016

1) I'm mystified by the quotation marks and the capitalisation in the last line.
2) Is 'as watery as the amount of oil to salt water we were getting in our leases' grammatically correct? I don't think so. Needs rewriting, I'd think.

Enjoyed reading it.