Because of 30 years Ago
My grandmother, she is banished.
She goes and sleeps at other people’s houses
While my grandfather writhes at home alone.
He is convinced she is a seventy six year old whore
And unless he is dying he keeps her away.
She says he has a pistol under his pillow.
She dreams of her demise. By him of course.
He says he will divorce her. Now.
He should have done it 30 years ago
When she betrayed him, but he didn’t.
Now 30 years later, he finds proof of her infidelity a long time ago,
and that black beast within, named hate, stews and churns like an inflamed ulcer.
His anger clouds all reason. He is blind to reality.
At least the reality of the moment.
Yet what is reality.
His, is that he was betrayed. Lived a life of loneliness.
Did someone, somewhere understand him?
So blinded by a communist state.
He believes life back then in communism was way better than today.
He recounts his glory days. In the army.
When he played volleyball and was happy.
He is tall. He instilled respect in many.
Now he doesn’t.
He went to get his pension and some guy on the street
Stopped him to steal it from him.
He is belittled by a disease there is no cure for.
And he is accepting of it. All alone he wakes up day after day.
What is he thinking? What keeps him going?
He eats food. And drinks water. And shits in a plastic bag
Attached to his body, because he has no colon.
Not a healthy one.
Does this offend you? I should hope not, because
It’s someone’s reality. He lives it every day
And is accepting of it, so don’t you dare be offended by it.
He gets betrayed by a woman. His entire life alone.
Yet he sees me, alone still at 28 and tells me
“Life is better when you marry, when you have a family”.
It makes me cry. He is worried about me.
He worries for me. His marriage failed and he alone,
Yet he praises marriage to me and the bond between two beings.
That’s what he thinks about.
He asks me about my mother, his daughter.
How long does she drive to work? I tell him about fifty minutes one way.
He worries. That’s a long time. Indeed it is.
One hundred minutes in a car five days a week
Doing twelve hour days for a meager salary
That allows you to live and pay your taxes.
We are reduced to numbers.
That’s what he thinks about.
He is so blinded by those false promises of that old regime.
Yet he is human. He loves too and he hurts too.
He is just disillusioned. Lied to and abandoned.
Is he deserving of his fate? I will never know the truth
Because I don’t believe my grandmother
And I rarely believe my mother. So I will never know.
But I could feel. I feel he did many wrongs
But he is a human being too. That’s what I feel.
(2014)
