My Family's Oldest Child

My Family's Oldest Child

I am not my mother

Yet the spirit translates

we are darkened thoughts at times

Afraid, impending doom

But I am not shy of the witch

and she is bold in walking fowarth

We are in agreement

That there are two sides to every coin

We are both flavors of sweet and mean

And i heard that, desire to feed

The blackened beast is strong

She doesn’t shake when she sings

And i quiver even here

I wish i could've been there, when she was younger than me

I wonder how runs this wound deep

Is it my grandmother’s wound too?

How far back have the women like us been?

Passed down by blood, often in spirit too

But I am the solving of the mystery

The unraveling of the minute age

When we are not burned at the stake

But masqueraded as by men

And told that we are anything less than born this way

I am earth and Mother even without the seed

My proof is in my pressing forward, multi onioning my mind

Revealing patterns I could never before have seen

I am my mother’s daughter, a Devotee in my chest

And a lover inside me, we are openly attracted

To something being wrong, but I am done

The supplement junkie born and raised in chemical warfare

Just as she had came to be a woman

A piece of her soul born in me

And i wonder if she did that intentionally

Age takes time to whisper back

My mother’s father, she, and I

We are strong in the dark

With our differently matching eyes, our story telling minds

And our great and terrible hurt held and broken anger

How did I come to be here, so far away and removed

Easily and eagerly, and with ample assistance

Soon, I too, will be reaching back

And in truth, the truth has made me afraid

So what does that say? The language spoken

Is a burning in the chest. It’s the woodwork

I’ve been lighting alive and then on fire

Purifying this aching and gentle line

And I have not that kind of foresight just yet

To know exactly what that means

Except that experience could end any day

And i find that I don’t want that

Except to say how poetic a life lived

To have died before ever knowing death.

JCB May 2022