Unravel

Unraveling is  the spider's web in my family tree

I hear the undoing in my mother's voice as she tells me about her father

like a wrinkled love note thrown in the trash, that you pull out to read

once more

in the mess of lines some words stand out more than others, almost making it ring clearer for the first time.

"I am your daughter," she said.

"Do you know who I am?"

We do not.

In my family, we do not know.  We bind it up instead, hiding the years in layers of retreat
and discretion.

Where hurling fists get hung like flies trapped in the spiderwebs.

We coil them up, quietly, hastily, methodically until they no longer look the same, and voices are muffled.

But we forget to kill them.

And the flies find their way, ripping at the silks of repression

The love notes...we kept them, when we should've burned them.

And now they unfold in our laps, and the important things stand out, screaming at us from across the room:


I was scared.
I was hurt.
I am broken.