Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

The Keeper of His Secrets

My great grandparents.
Sixty-five years married.
Both of them in their eighties.
Mouths
flat as cardboard.
Mouths
shut so tight they look as though their teeth would fall out
if they ever dared open them.
He was still chopping wood then.
Ten years later,
he’d get a plastic stomach.
Even that wouldn’t kill him.
Fire in his eyes.
Southern fire.
Smoldering,
God fearin’,
Hell and damnation,
take a razor strap to your children
fire.
I never saw him smile.
Not once.
Truth is,
he scared the shit out of me.
Always pinching people.
Always telling my mother we needed to be spanked.
Rough as dead ivy.
Their anniversary photo sits on my piano.
Black and grey.
White hair.
Thick horned rim glasses.
He looks angry.
She looks dead.
Old,
vacant eyes.
The keeper of his secrets.