Poem for Tuesday

Grandfather Says
By Ai

"Sit in my hand."
I'm ten.
I can't see him,
but I hear him breathing
in the dark.
It's after dinner playtime.
We're outside,
hidden by trees and shrubbery.
He calls it hide-and-seek,
but only my little sister seeks us
as we hide
and she can't find us,
as grandfather picks me up
and rubs his hands between my legs.
I only feel a vague stirring
at the edge of my consciousness.
I don't know what it is,
but I like it.
It gives me pleasure
that I can't identify.
It's not like eating candy,
but it's just as bad,
because I had to lie to grandmother
when she asked,
"What do you do out there?"
"Where?" I answered.
Then I said, "Oh, play hide-and-seek."
She looked hard at me,
then she said, "That was the last time.
I'm stopping that game."
So it ended and I forgot.
Ten years passed, thirtyfive,
when I began to reconstruct the past.
When I asked myself
why I was attracted to men who disgusted me
I traveled back through time
to the dark and heavy breathing part of my life
I thought was gone,
but it had only sunk from view
into the quicksand of my mind.
It was pulling me down
and there I found grandfather waiting,
his hand outstretched to lift me up,
naked and wet
where he rubbed me.
"I'll do anything for you," he whispered,
"but let you go."
And I cried, "Yes," then "No."
"I don't understand how you can do this to me.
I'm only ten years old,"
and he said, "That's old enough to know."

--------

Was having a conversation yesterday with a friend about why I can write a whole variety of kinks that revolt her but I absolutely refuse to read any fic with anyone underage involved with an adult. That poem is it exactly. Even artificially aging a character doesn't negate the sense of wrongness for me. YMMV of course; it just fascinates me how bodily fluids squick people who don't even blink at non-con.

Death By David Thewlis. Whom I am going to see again in HP:POA this evening with my children, who have had to wait this long due to their very busy sports schedules. Today my older son's grade is performing a play about colonial America -- he plays a British sentry, which I believe makes him a bad guy -- so we will be at the school for the performance before the movie.

Yesterday afternoon was taken up with taking the younger son to the orthodontist, then the older son had fencing, and we half-watched X2 since it was on in the evening. And oh! I forgot to mention that I got up early this morning to try to watch the transit of Venus, but it was too hazy to see through our Astronomy Magazine eclipse-viewers, and we settled for watching the webcast.

Aragorn has eaten through his entire treehouse, and is really not a very good nest-maker; Boromir always did that for him when they lived together. Here he is, sleeping in the silliest position imaginable, and looking rather uncomfortable, while Boromir is in a big enormous pile of shavings and chewed toilet paper rolls that we refer to as "the volcano" as it erupts and spills through the bars onto the kitchen floor whenever he decides to venture forth.


I suppose I had better get him a new treehouse or three, as he seems to be gnawing through them faster than ever before. Poor frustrated guy.