I am from electric fences,
from hay mowed up the hillside.
I am from horses nobody wanted,
and wayward dogs
pushed from cars in search of a home.
(They were always petted and fed
when they arrived in our barn.)
I am from the in between
of bluegrass and coal
where the townsfolk say
ambition is above your raising.
I am from Miriam and Leon
who ignored the townsfolk.
I am from where people leave.
I’m from autoharps and fiddles,
from four-part harmonies sung
to a pump organ
in a white clapboard church.
I am from preachers who say
women should be silent.
I am from women who are made
of big words.
I’m from the Legend
of the Sharkey brothers,
their lost treasure sending
children into woods
filled with blackberry branches
and a town so long abandoned
tins of Sunlight Soap sit in
the general store window.
I am from cornbread
and buttermilk biscuits,
from the lung my mother
lost to a tumor,
the college job my father
lost to politics.
In my parents’ closet,
jewelry boxes lined the edges,
generations of memories
stored in their velvet insides.
On rainy days,
my mother would remove
select pieces,
encircle me in her words,
let me dream of the day
I, too, would have stories to tell.
