inheritance

We received these gods and symbols, the shape of unborn cites, the color of our eyes. We arrive with this rush of the certain, the confluence of blood and history only leading to us here. It is the leaden taste of victory, the august grace of raw survival, the mingling of every slip of chance that feeds the day. We see and are saved as we have learned it was meant to be. Chains of ancestry, all the translations of conquest and theft arrive here just in time, our bad hands and lucky stars.

The rain falls just as the forecast claimed. The sky the gray of striking eyes, the rain as soft and furtive as the whispered oaths of false tongues and good hearts. The chain of relationships and intersections in between chest and t-shirt, a mosquito lands on a shoulder to sample such storied blood. The storm has settled in beats and hints, as our cutting prophecies raise their eyes and claim their cut. Being born alone is beating the odds.

I arrive in the tangle of language, peripheral to every intrigue save the one that binds us all. I arrive with the clatter of metal and the roar of jet engines. Here upon the cusps of fluid economies and migrating populations, heir to the mantel of all these wars and crimes. I float upon contingency, fluent in all the forms of tangled chance. Lucky to be here, where these bets come due. Blessed to be lost amid all the lost tomorrows I owe to this aimless life.