Sometimes my brain tells me to cry
There’ll be no reason why
I know it’s all in my mind
While I’m stabilizing a bloodline
Didntchaknow?

You inherit the lives of the father, the mother and the shit you weren’t there for
By birth it’s yours
You can become a reflection
Or reflect
You can spin the cycle
Or take it off of the ledge
Reconstruct the story
Or act like you don’t know

You’re repeating history

You know the work it took
The deep, hard look
Into generations taken by
Poverty’s abuse?
Now that shit is shook
Into me it didn’t sink its hooks

Or the future’s.

We’re not untouched
We’re just not unloved
Neither are the before us

Everytime my mind seeks an escape
I recall I carry the DNA of child sex slaves, of beaten children, of broken homes
Until those strands combined one honeymoon night and rewrote the stories laid buried deep in their
          bones

My life has overpowered horrors of its own

I know I’m not alone

Endings can be happy.

I rise from the ashes of determination
I’m a monument to the condemnation of the world defining
Your surf

Grandmother feeding 12 lives on Her own
Without signs of hurt
Grandmother surviving abandonment and, without knowledge of what it meant,
Instinctually instilled love without attachment
You just know
This we all know
It’s all we have to know

You have to.

Stand at the head of shadow spines be the light crowning a darkened night

You are the new life.

Web beauty with the silk of your bloodline.

*This is for you.*

Liza Zayas is a lover of writing and dancing and celebrates both as a singer and songwriter performing as Luna del Flor. You can hear her collaborative sounds and experience life through her storytelling. She invites you to dance. Her poetry seeks to initiate dialogue by intentionally expressing consequences of love, lust, ego and self-respect.