So yes
I gallivant here and there these days
What’s it to you?
I’ve suffered enough in my life
Don’t intend to carry on that family tradition
Think it’s not possible?
Just watch me
Inspired by The Daily Word Prompt at Cyranny
Point Turned
ancestry
Traveling On
I hear you
My constant companions
Some whispering, some insistent
All desperate to be heard
Reaching from behind to steer me
Safely through the world
A world you did not survive
I hear you
I do
But I must find my own way
Must live new mistakes
And leave this world
Having lived new ways of being in it
I hear you
I do
And I say
Thank you
And I say
Goodbye
Inheritance
I hear their screams of silent disapproval
Feel their arms, clutching me, holding me back
“Don’t go out there. You’ll die. It’s not safe for us.”
My belly’s a stone
Ingested before I was born
I’ve tried to throw it up
Doesn’t budge, it’s mine now
I carry it with me
This inheritance
This heavy key to the past
This memorial to those before me
This museum housing their lives’ dreams and losses
Maybe it’s not something to pass
Like a kidney stone
Or to be removed like a cancerous growth
Perhaps I need only to lovingly lay it down
At the feet of those whose dreams I am now living
Perhaps their burdens are not mine to carry
But mine just to remember, and know
As I move forward into my own life’s dreams and losses
To be remembered, one day, and known
By those who come behind me
Life On The Skinny Branches 