selective focus photography of woman lying on flowers

I am reconsidering the story of my aunt

born thirteen years after my mom.

She was a lovechild, my gram had said,

and also that she was not wanted.

It dawned on me the way dreams and words

sometimes simmer that she may not have

been Grandad’s child.  That Gram, for all

her control over everything, everyone 

had lost control like some teenage girl.

She told Grandad he had rolled over

in the middle of the night, got on her,

fell back to sleep.  He didn’t know if

that might not be true.  What I know 

is my aunt always tried to fit, that she often 

wore a moo-moo, no bra, would lean

down to talk to me, beautiful white breasts

with pink nipples she may have wanted

me to touch and I did but didn’t.  That

if she was not her father’s child, she was

not that much of an aunt to me.

I have the .22 six-shooter she kept

by her bed at night in case she’d have 

to “shoot any preacher coming after me

in the night.”   Later,  I’d visit her in the nursing

home.  She’d ask accusingly, “You still have my gun?”

and fall asleep as I wondered if she was

dreaming Gram’s memory.