Ah yes

it is said being melancholy can beckon dementia

sometimes in the fog of sadness I understand too well

before the feeling wraps me in wool and drags me to rivers edge

it is also said families carry the weight of melancholy

like a tattered ball of twine lost in thick woods

will never lead you to safety

I wish I could rinse out this inherited stain

like the clothes I pound against rocks to clean

when we camp in the moors, lost to everything

save the graceless sunder of colorless sky

holding its rain like I might hold my saline

you haven’t seen me cry because I gave that up

along with map-reading and fortune-telling

it seemed a divination I didn’t need

instead I wish for quiet nights like these

lying beneath stars inhaling balsam and fir, almost able to pretend

I am whole and settled like a thick winter blanket

and not temporal spirit fitting with grief and unsaid things

for you, my ancestors will dream beneath dark earth

listening to the flicker of day to night

a herons marshy reflection on water

the soft tread of wordless auburn deer

and that weight in my throat, an iron key

to someone’s padlocked life

I take it down into the deep

it helps me sink

mocking my former wish

to swim for air