a bit of writing

                                                     
                                                        How Grandma Freed Us


When I was little I was ashamed of her
the smell of fish lingered around her always

When she smiled she never hid  her cavernous mouth
that revealed tough gums that had no memory of teeth

Her quilted,dark blue jacket frightened me
the smell of it made me want to runaway
from her

She always wore the same black cap
pulled over her head
one she knitted 
a long time ago

Ashamed I was
that this woman was my grandmother
this woman,with deeply lined skin, like leather
bushy eyebrows and oily gray hair

Ashamed, until one day
I saw her rescue a rabbit
while on our way home from the market

I had begged her to let me see Mr. Olsen's rabbits
THAT MAN'S NO GOOD she said
But I pleaded and she yielded
waited by the gate while I went back
to see the rabbits

Grandma was right
he was a bad man

Dirty, crowded cages
piles and piles of dead rabbit
bodies behind a shed

My eye caught sight of a suffering rabbit
its foot almost shorn from frantic rubbing
back and forth trying to free itself

I screamed out to grandma
and with powerful hands she forced
that cage open and freed the suffering rabbit
wrapped him in her black knit cap

She folded me into her arms
and I wept into her smelly blue jacket



truth hidden behind and in a story


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