SKIN

When you hear someone say

Yes I have a family

They're great

I have a momma and a pops

and a sister who's always on top

in her class, in the F-A-M-I-L-Y

And there's a grandmother, a thousand feet old

and my pop's sister, who doesn't seem like a sister

More like a best friend

And the circle is completed by a cat

A black cat, ironically

You wonder, what does it mean

To go to a house filled with laughter and joy

To light and blood

mixed into the arteries of ours

Family spelled O-W-N

To own what is yours and never letting go

It is a circle of trust and love

sharing the same last name by the bonds of hemoglobin

stretching the ligaments in the skin

The same skin, worn throughout the centuries that passed us by

When someone cannot remember their great grandparents names

It is indeed a great sorrow

For the people that you call your own

You have somehow forgotten

To leash them onto the string of your amygdala

And remember, try to remember

The mothers that gave birth to a generation

by pain and contracting one second later

Family spelled H-A-N-D-S

Holding each other tightly, curved into a tight bond of Hey, you have my nose

Or her eyes are indeed her dad's

The brownness of the pupil is reflected

By all the people who share

and care, for their futures together

Family spelled W-O-N-D-E-R-F-U-L

There can never be another

No matter how many times you sit down with people

Of the same skin and talk same talks

But the blood flowing in undercurrents under the century-old skin

can never be replaced

By any other place

Family is spelled M-I-N-E