McKenzie Curtis

Passed Down

Mom stored heartbreak in her ovaries

Before she bore me

Insecurity infused from which the mammary

I was drinking

Don’t get me wrong

My mother isn’t the enemy

She is the product of an ancestral curse

Grandma grew where bullets sang

Where blood fell heavy like summer rain

Where white stares followed her through the aisle

She tried to attain a semblance of whiteness

That was survival

Now I am here sewing us back together

dipping my needle in love, my thread

made of patience and all the divinity

that has and will live within me