My Grandmother Kept Her Sexuality
by Linda Jo Scott

My grandmother kept her sexuality packed away
In a lavender-scented drawer with flowered paper lining
And a key.
"I only did that dirty business three times," she whispered,
"Once for Margaret,
Once for Robert,
Once for Thomas."
She marked the top middle border of her gray chenille spread with a
safety pin,
"So I can put the covers on straight,"
She'd claim, lining them up each morning
With the carved wooden flowers on the headboard,
And for seventy years, she slept on the left side of that pin,
That tiny silver Berlin wall:
Forty years of safety from grandfather
(With three short periods of rapprochement),
And then thirty years of safety all alone.
Even in her dreams, she wore long sleeves and a garter belt,
And she carried a parasol
To ward off wolves who sang of lust in the night.