brass ankles (cook and hall)

just a moment, what a crazy energy,

arriving like cars, along this internal freeway.

I can hardly trap it. it’s only been a week. a week and a day. but today feels like beauty. I should have listened before now, to Lana Del Ray, should have kept to the path, might have buried those doubts in a shed somewhere during that first trip to the sea, after the ice formed crystals in me.

I wanted to say it, but those ears are closed to me. and I get it, we over compensate. but momma that religion traumatized me. and those beatings were not as bad as the question left in me. those bruises erased themselves as I grew into this. watch me chase love momma. watch me holding hands in my mind forever afraid of a real connection. I think I heard you say, earn this love, and that God told you, heaven is full. with your fists and your feet, with your words and your lumber, you did the best you could. so what if I grew to think my worth was tied to a celestial truth. they stole your truth too momma. they made a liar out of you. watched you sacrifice your sons, just like me now momma. just like me.

ancestors on the bottom of the boat, bottom of the sea. rolling over in this luxury of mine, a thought for ancestors, surviving isn’t the only way to live. is this the way the curse is broken? die to this struggle, live again in the reward of…