SNAKES

All those years when my mother knew exactly
what my grandfather was doing, she knew,
and she let it continue. Her excuse: It happened to me too.
After my grandmother had left him, had packed her things
and moved out, he complained of being lonely,
said he wanted a girl to help about the house.
I begged her not to send me, peed on myself, hollered,
rolled in the dirt, told her how he spooned-up
against me at night, his hot breath quickening
around my neck. How frightened
I was of his darkened contorted face. Then the touch
of those rough, callused hands, reaching for
my breasts – the shame of them –
the revulsion of them – I wished they would stay buried
within my body. Then the sudden sharp pain
of those large knobbed fingers between my legs. It was then
that I learnt to hate myself, to feel different,
to know that something was wrong
with me. She taught me to take it, to forgive my grandfather
and take it. She taught me that this was what it meant
to be a woman. I did not know how to name
what my mother and my grandfather had done to me,
until that day at the zoo when I saw them, a family,
curled around each other, saw the venomous tongues that darted
and flickered, the evil intent in their glowing red eyes.