After “Autopsy of a Routine” 

I did not inherit jewels,
nor land,
nor the soft shelter of arms.

What I carry
is quieter, heavier:
a hush sewn like ash beneath my skin,
a way of biting down on need
until it dissolves in blood.

From her,
I learned that a woman can retreat,
can hover at the edge of a room —
a lung emptied of its echo.

From him,
I learned that a man can cage tenderness
behind his teeth and offer it only
to the corpse already cold.

This is my inheritance:
a heart made of stone water,
enduring
without asking.

But I have a daughter
who runs barefoot through the dawn,
like a river breaking its dam,
laughs like lightning lives inside her,
turns grief into constellations,
with fingers still unscorched by shame,
and fills every silence I’ve swallowed
with the drums in her blood.

She will not inherit silence.

I will carve her voice into the wind,
press it like an ember into her lungs
so she exhales her truth as flames.
I will teach her hands to clutch the world she claims,
feet to outpace fear,
eyes to witness storms and still find light.
She will howl in the dark with her head held high,
laugh until the walls tremble,
spin chaos into galaxies,
name her desires and demand they drop at her feet,
and I will watch, mouth brimming with tears,
as she drags the quiet from my bones
and builds a life that thunders:

I will not be quiet.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Katarzyna Pypla on Unsplash