I don't know  If you know I know  But I figured out  Something about people And that is  That I know that part is still inside of you 

 It has never hurt so much To tell myself  "This isn't good for you."  I have never felt like so violently screeching  Making raw, bulging cords That might snap and gut My throat   A sharp hiss Of outward air Being the extent of any scream I might still have inside  my belly And all my veins in between  Because you decided to be the judge Of what I deserved When you knew you chose darkness But called my light brujeria  Gestured widely at the plants on my altar As if I was tainting you  Holding you here When I was just gifting you  What I've already given to myself Acceptance, understanding, tenderness, a free heart I will never regret that  Like you will Because you couldn't receive it.  

 I just remembered How we are supposed to honor the ancestors Continue living as if They are near and here.  Do the things for them They can't do anymore. Remember them. Speak.  Send your devotions.  Touch the Earth that is holding them. Love the good ways they loved you. See their face in your head. And their smile. Talk about them.  Help your kids to know them.  Make sure to know what being alive means.  Respect the time you have. 

 There's a raw space that I went to  When I started to feel that pull-away It was a place I was fighting not to feel  It was a place I had to face every night  Even after facing you in my fury at the way you dared to ditch me In the wildest hours of one's life In the most crazed of places that exists inwardly I crumbled I melted into agony I cried Abandoned tears I wept for my mother For my father For my embryonic self For my son For my granddaughters For my lineage And that's really why I'm angry Because the next seven generations Will feel what has happened here  And I wanted them to feel love I wanted them to feel togetherness I wanted them to feel peace And I have passed your pain through my pelvis Because those days changed the way I see the world The way I feel my feelings And it has made my love for my son  Impenetrably sealed  Around the inner children we will continue to heal  Love is the energy that cannot be broken

 Aniin I had been asking you to visit, because we never got to be together again.  I was wondering, what would you say to me? How would your hug feel?  I've heard so much about you, and you are talked about with so much love.  I want you to know that once I found out who I was, I dedicated my life to honoring you Because I knew Indians were honorable but I didn't know what it really meant to be one To live through everything that we all did And to still be here? I didn't really know we were still here, even though I was here.  When I started speaking the language, I thought of you. Did you remember how to speak? Did you ever speak Indian in your mind?  I know that Grandmothers are special people, predecessors of us with so many stories to tell, so many triumphs to share And I wouldn't know what yours were I was so glad you left the journals. I can hear your voice when I read it. You're funny.  I liked what you said. You always wrote down when someone owed you money.

 I'm writing this as a tired mother of a newborn...for the sixth time.  It's something I'm enduring gratefully and graciously, as I asked for this from a deep place of longing and desire to nurture a baby human again, to have another chance at remembering this time and space again of being vulnerable and closest to the primitive being-ness of being human. Of smelling the smell of a human that came from me, and welling up another sum of love to last him for the rest of my life.  And it is with pregancy, and delivery, and breastfeeding, and be-ing as a mother-this need for food. Food is the life-source that allows us to take once-living things, reuse them as our fuel, and partake in this practice several times a day, hopefully done often with others that we love and that we like as we maintain our own place in this life by our need to feed. I'm grateful to have fond memories around food, not that the food was always the best, but the memories of it's surroundings leav