My husband’s look of love scares me,

turns off all emotion,
rendering intimacy hysteria for me
and forces a series of dogged pursuits by my Husband

whom I adore more than life itself.

Can’t turn off the flashbacks
loved Grandpa so
but not enough to do some hanky panky

that even as a child I knew to be wrong.

Bad enough the little sex games we did
when I was REALLY little and knew nothing of right or wrong,
just a fun game we played
till caught by Auntie who pronounced us both “disgusting”!
Why I never knew.
My fear that Grandma was jealous just made her laugh,
“Silly girl” to think such things.
What was there to be jealous of
between a little girl and her older husband?
What indeed!
What a deed!
She told me years later
he never was unfaithful

in all fifty years of marriage
“Ha!” I thought but never said,
“what he did with me
was that not infidelity?”

“You do the hanky panky

and you turn yourself around

and that’s what it’s all about.”

I remember that lewd smile even today.
Will it take me to my dying day to forget?
Oh how I loved him…
Taking me for after dinner walks
to catch fireflies,

silently sitting at the window together
at night after dinner,
watching the neighbors below,

Grandma in the kitchen,
Just him and me
a quiet bond between us,
or telling me bedtime stories of his youth.

My fault–
I was the seductress,
dancing in a hula skirt for him,
with tennis balls tucked into my aunt’s bra for breasts,
Hula dancing
to his songs he played on the mandolin.
Oh how I loved him!
No one knew.
I forgot about the “thing” between us till decades later,
when a friend talked about her incestuous abuse.

Oh how he loved me!
Arm around me always on the living room sofa
watching American Bandstand on the TV

giving me his whiskey-soaked cherry,
teaching me about art
making me the artist I am today.
Preaching the middle way to me

of relevance later, way later,
as it takes me a lifetime to learn the meaning of “I am Bipolar.”
Oh how I idolized him!
He carved the Lincoln Gettysburgh address, you know, in D.C, at the Lincoln Memorial
and many other illustrious statues.
He was a revered lawyer, working with veterans,
a self made man,
knowing no English
when he first came here
all alone at 16
and went to night school to learn English

while working as a sculptor
and then to law school.
He was a hero
helping poor veterans,
himself wounded in the war.
He was a hero
but no one knew

he was my hero.
“Of course he was having strokes,” my doc says.

“Maybe that explains the incest,” he says to me.
Men stick together
To defend the unspeakable
Which I just now speak out blasting loud and clear

in the blogosphere

for all to hear.

Naughty girl/old woman!
Just now allow myself the anger
while preserving the idolatry and Grandpa’s love

for such a love, and not irony this,

such a love is so VERY special!