Lots of people can hold a grudge.
I’m pretty good at putting one in a drawer,
where it slowly gets looser, bits of fluff separating
from the main body of memory, becoming less urgent with time.
My ex-wife, though, didn’t just hold grudges.
She planted and watered her grudges
until they were room sized vines,
luxuriant foliage of resentment,
long clasping tendrils of insinuation.
Her grudges were of the old school
Dutch masters of projection, Goyas of misunderstanding
Raphaels of things made up from whole bolts of cloth.
She nursed her grudges
held them close to her chest like a holy child laid in a manger
wrapped in cloth strips of sullen meanness.
What a joy it was to tear that babe from her breast
and smash it’s head against the stones
to take a spray can and deface her carefully-crafted art,
sealing her grudges in a layer of rainbow colored graffiti,
to wield my machete in that room,
slicing through the trunks of twining ugliness,
letting the hacked up bits slide to the floor,
never again to strangle my joy.
Slut of the Cloth 
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