Ancestor

On moonlit nights I stare into the dark and the stars I cannot see in the city and wonder about the woman, who so long ago, was my ancestor. Did she stare at those stars in the countryside of Canton and find them hopeful, or mocking of her life, pulled low by poverty and disease, by a family broken into pieces too jagged and shattered to shift and put together again? I have tried to put those pieces so they are whole, pressed my thumb against the jagged edges praying to blunt their sharpness, but my fingers bleed in erose tragedy. The voices around me mock my ineptitude, my sorrow, and my thoughts. But I think of that woman of long ago and wonder if she would have understood me. I think of that woman sitting below that vastness of space and think of the peace coming to her – as she realizes that she is but a small piece of tapestry in a greater world full of joyous things – and for a while, I too, believe.

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