Roots

"We, too, are going the reverse-flower way." - Yehuda Amichai

My roots are my family, my ancestors, their names walk in my head. My roots are memories of aunts and uncles and cousins and houses full of people and laughter, children and animals everywhere. My roots are people you might not acknowledge or see as beautiful. My roots are poor and proud. My roots are rough, hardy, hand sown, and deep. Roma gypsy great grandmother said she shapeshifted to save her life, read palms and tarot cards and cooked toe nails and mandrakes in kitchen spells for lovesick women, predicted my birth and still visits my dreams. My great-great-grandfather killed in a gunfight over a poker game in a saloon still standing on main street in the town where my father grew up and still lives. My roots are generations and generations in the dirt, coal mines, gardens and prisons. My roots are war and deep, profound love simply expressed in kindness and the preparing and sharing of food. My roots are violence. My roots are flowering in peace, in the idea of peace, a real desire for peace in my lifetime, a promise to myself to end all destructive cycles. My roots are sun-cracked skin, greenhouses and vegetables delivered on a mule on the dirt roads of the New World. My roots are Mediterranean and Grandma Diamond and ancient fables and buttermilk biscuits and pentecostal long skirts and singing by the river on Frogtown road, my roots are with her. My roots smell like wet-earth, cowshit, cooking sauce, deep-fried seances. My roots are my destiny. Because I needed to happen. The universe was created for me, Appalachian braid hanging down my back like a poached snake, my olive skin becomes thick hide and my hooves are on the ground, running, always running. My roots are deer hunting, squash, slaughtered chickens, Sicilian blackjack, babies on knees and strapped to our backs and hundreds of white cabbage butterflies flying at a fairy tale pace through the catnip. I stand in a yellow summer dress laughing as their wings brush the insides of my thighs.