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Poetry | June 2017

Dear Grandpa

By Dayna Patterson

Every time we greeted
you’d pinch my cheek
hard, too hard for the tease
you meant it to be. I’d cry
and you’d laugh it off. I braced
myself for your fingers’ vice
Sundays at church. The red of my cheek
a one-sided blush. Then one day, grown to a teen,
before you had the chance I grabbed your face and pinched
hard as I could, a laugh on my lips, a decade’s bruises to avenge.
You never tried it again. And although you’ve been gone for years, I remember
your face snagged with surprise: this grandgirl clacking her claws, skittering sideways.

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