Quantum Prayer

And a vow to my foremothers before the sky above and the earth below

Photo by Paul Zoetemeijer

You entangle me.    I hear your drumbeat.
I use your strength.  I call on your knowing.

I devastate with you. Same like you devastate.
  My floor drops out from under me in the same rooms.

And I believe like you believe.
  Like you mailed a letter and the postmark
    says some day in the 1800’s
But it’s still arriving
   and my DNA post office keeps receiving it.

I believe everything it says
    Knowing my flesh and blood wrote it.
This is our code. This is what we know.
This is survival,
   Our way how we abide our lives.

I carry you with me wherever I go.
   Out of respect. Out of loyalty.
They were your feelings. This is enough for me.
I owe you my existence.

It may be unwise to question, but I must:

This strange absence of love,
   This holding back
Done so carefully, so thoroughly, 
   So    (can it be true?)    lovingly.

Loving by withholding love.

What creature under heaven could conceive
   of such a twisted route
Much less live it through the generations??

I am here to name this. To heal this.
   Not one more daughter.
This legacy of transformation will be my only child.