The gift of giving
wilting trees and houses built on sinkholes lost traditions, and blood lines soaking into the earth eating away at the long-forgotten corpses of our lineage broken mirrors holding disfigured reflections of little brown girls with twisted mouths and charred fingertips these rest on creaky floor boards and against old wooden walls draped in white sheets books with no spines pages out of order and words that don’t fit anything i feel strewn across a room that belongs to all whoever wishes it theirs though my name is etched into the door jam and my skin hangs from the knob
these are the things my family gave to me.