the first person in the bloodline to analyze their trauma does so after causing their weight in it.

for years

I became the shape of my anguish. I wasn’t just hurt. I was the hurt.

when you are the wound and the salt

you would do anything to stop the hellfire you have become

but not before

you enact the pain, make it reverberate

into someone else’s lap

say heavy

say here

say here’s heavy

between kindnesses which was how you were loved, wasn’t it?

everything has a catalyst, even you.

in my family it is tradition

to forget what didn’t kill you.

If it was a trauma

We do not call it a trauma.

We don’t call it at all.

I come from two lines of hurt people who’ve spent lifetimes pretending they aren’t hurt people

I come from the ridicule I was met with after realizing this and doing something about it

I come from intense emotions and the shame thrust upon me for having them and all the places I stuffed them in response

I come from the unraveling

then the learning how to upcycle my history

I come from big hearts and bigger armor

from so much love and laughter it makes a partner tell me,

‘your heart is so vast it scares me’

my heart became this

meadow when I started

tending the weeds

that entangled my loved ones

after they grew over my own feet

because you can’t move forward like that.

I have enough space now

I have enough to be a home for myself

and still have guests over

my heart became this meadow

only after