Inheritance

Staring in the mirror at my family collapsing,

crumbling into sharp

edged

chunks

and clinking like shattered glass around my feet. 

Privileges squandered, gifts too easily given. 

Yet fists still cling to some imagined scarcity.

Closed tight and delusional, as thin as air. 

Still demanding more like some drug crazed addict. 

The convenience of saccharine sweet religion,

brimstone judgment and impossible expectations.

Conditions placed on love like an ever-receding mirage, 

Leave me thirsty. 

Skin-deep Christmas cards.

Shallow rebellions and superficial ties. 

Just enough for holiday meals.

I say it’s time.

Time to let the house burn down!

Time to let the light stream through.

True strength is saying enough when you’re already sucked dry. 

What more can you possibly want?

You’ve already siphoned our life breath

like a vacuum into your emptiness.  And for what?

You lift not even a finger to save yourself. 

Easy to sacrifice the rest of us as we carefully teeter on the knife-edge of our lives.

Struggling to survive,

keeping our own ships afloat.

Bleeding,

sweating,

crying,

but carrying on.

Now it’s time to back off. 

I’m breaking this cycle! 

I want something REAL to pass down to my children. 

Flesh and blood, skinned kneed resilience. 

And not the hold-your-breath kind. 

Not these blurry shadows,

these shape shifters flitting past our windows at night, 

afraid of the lightning strike. 

But the open-the-windows-and-let-the-rain-in-kind. 

The cry and cuss but get

            back

up

kind. 

The watch-this-rising-phoenix-breathe-ashes-back-to-life kind. 

If you knew love,

you wouldn’t question me. 

You’d just know,

deep down in your cells,

you’d know. 

Ya, I’m here.

Got your back in the dark.

But only if you’re making an effort to stand on your own goddamn feet. 

Don’t fucking expect me to carry you! 

I’ve got enough weight on my own

and a stress fracture to prove it. 

Yet I’m still out here running, tears streaming, chest heaving. 

So get the fuck off your ass and throw a goddam foot forward. 

Stop bitching and howl. 

Gut wrenching and alive. 

Who told you life is easy?

It’s hard and gets gritty.

You have to be tough.

It’s not an option.

You don’t think I know pain? 

Ruptured tendon. 

Open lung biopsy. 

Pinched disk on my wedding night.

Flying from DF to Austin with a collapsed lung.

Driving myself over an international border to the emergency room.

Working in a foreign country with 104 temperature and a baby strapped to my chest. 

Passing out like a felled tree on the cold tile floor surrounded by strangers.

My unborn child buried in the mountains of Oaxaca.

C section barely sealed,

sleep deprived,

nipples cracked and bleeding

yet gritting my teeth to offer them again and again to a crying baby. 

Setting a match to my own marriage

to save myself, my children… 

Ya, I’m stopping this cycle.

And I’m too damn grateful to give up now. 

I will stand,

shoulders thrown back and laugh,

filling these battered lungs. 

I will blaze a new path for my children to follow,

throw them off the scent of this dead end street. 

This is not love. 

This is tissue paper thin ego, pounding its chest.

Looks big but rips up close.

It’s frail and fragile to the touch. 

So I may be exhausted,

but no amount of shaking will free these roots. 

They sink deep, tapped into another source you’ve yet to find. 

So I’ll fan the flames as the house burns.

Close my eyes and let them lap up higher and higher

to see over your bull shit,
past the fear and smoke to an open sky. 

So if you really care,

                        meet me there.