In a dream I had—walking
with jingling
keys, I happened upon my illustrious dead
grandfather,
at the end of a dim hall, back in the tall
town where I (sort of)
grew up. Only, instead of five,
I was thirty-
two years old. And he,
then in his mid or late sixties, baggy and manila-
clothed—and likewise a
bit of a priest, who married lots of pretty
keys to their locks—had become none
other than the
janitor of my Catholic school.
Thinking this likely as tense and strange
for him
as it felt for me—I figured (especially
since we both
were grown
men now) probably
best to open with a joke. Hey,
grandpa, have
you heard? They say you can tell
how important
a guy is—
by how many keys he carries?
He did not
smile but promptly told me—
to shut my
fucking mouth up,
spitting on me a little
in the process, and that no
one likes a smartass.
Which I guess was alright,
because, like I
said, we both were men. But also,
alas, as
now I could plainly
see a lot
better, because he wasn't
really my grandfather
after all.
He was—my goddamn
mother's dad.
