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Saturday 14 May 2022

I'M SITTING

opposite my grandpa and he has

a bottle of whisky and some benzos on the table

in front of him. He’s eighty-five and the furrows


in his face say he’s never had therapy.

He tells me that the pills are just painkillers, 

that the whisky is apple juice, but I can see


those red lines crowd his eyes, trace my lineage

back through them to my mum with me in her arms

as she paces round the dining room table,


and on through my grandpa to his own mother,

watching Hitler as he raves in a Berlin park.

I can feel myself sinking through the pit 


of his pupils, and no matter how hard I try 

to claw at the sides this legacy is my destiny:

a shame no shower could wash away.