Grandma Curcio

Grandma Curcio
You look out at me
From a yellow, cracked photograph
Even my mother
Doesn't remember your first name
She cannot be faulted
You were dead
Long before she married your son

Who were you, really?
Are you hidden in
The hard lines etched
In your grim, granite, grandma face?
Did those eyes pierce the soul
Of your alcoholic husband
And cause him to bleed?
Is that why he terrorized
You and your children?

I can only know you
Through my father's few words
"She was a wonderful, sweet woman"
I can only know you
Through his actions as a teenager
When he beat his father - perhaps as badly
As grandpa had beaten you all:
"If you ever touch Ma again, I'll kill you"
My father did not have to
Carry out his threat

Grandma Curcio
You lived on
In the man my father became
And now that he is gone
You live on in me
Who will gaze upon
My yellow cracked photograph?
Will they know my name
And wonder who I was?
And who will they be?

April 2005