The way his fingers graced the finely tuned keys pulled some kind of apparition out from underneath
A hot southern summer blues of a memory—but I know it didn’t belong to me
Rattles and echoes of distant ancestors reside in my body, their blood pulsating through me,their experiences imprinted somewhere subconsciously.
My mind wanders to
German Jews on trains—there is a break in the tree
and I can’t help but wonder
how many might still be listed as family.
I think of Black slaves in the fields and a woman in fear
of the French men in suits who take pride in their catch of the day.
A torn dress soiled in unimaginable duty-
but it’s how we got here.
All of them, a thread of my lineage.
I think of Spaniards in small towns, praying in candlelit churches, a blue glow upon insurmountable dreams.
A green-eyed woman boarding a ship for promised land called Mexico and the Indigenous people met. A trade of European village life for spices and a wild freedom.
They all belong to me—my blood is imprinted with stories.
I wonder if I somehow pay for the debts of their days or reap the good karma they may have accumulated?
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I jump up to find a woman—perhaps a grandmother coming through,yet another mother’s mother I never knew.
She haunts me on occasion, or perhaps she is attempting to be a messenger, unsure how to make her presence ever-present
to a child who could not place her face in any room. But I feel her blood and choices and taste a familiarity in gumbo and chicory coffee you can only buy on Bourbon Street.
I pause on a sentiment from a Rabbi I heard recently, words inscribed into my very psyche:
"The day that you were born is the day that God decided the world would not be perfect without you."
