my grandfather
was a sweetheart

he died
in pain
at home
at the age of sixty six
with a colostomy bag
hanging
while his wife,
my grandmother,
made him work
in those fields
all morning long

one night
he got home-
drunk
to:
'where were you,
you drunk fool?'
he slapped her
back in the time
hitting a woman
was the thing to do

she didn't forget,
forty years later
she hasn't forgot,
that drunk slap

the expression:
'vengeance
is better served cold'
was first spoken by a man
and performed by a woman