LINEAGE

A tincture was given for the black babe
not to be born. When he stayed, clinging
to existence, his mother was uprooted.
White women, unmarried, carry shame.
The son had gone before her milk came.

My father was born rootless, but not ungrounded.
He learnt, the land had its own language,
heather on the heathland, bark on an Ash Tree.
Chased Magpie and Blue Tit through rivers
and up hills. Black and green, black and green.

I arrived, his cappuccino-coloured daughter
Some might say high yella’. Lighter than expected. 
Beautiful all the same. A choice was made; 
to hang my placenta from a Portuguese Oak, 
let the birds carry it away.

I, too, was born rootless, but not ungrounded.
The land, I learnt, has its own language.
Cool moss of an ancient forest, warm 
splash of sea, dark earth, I could call home.

My daughter was born carrying her lineage
through waves in her coils, stirring the ocean 
in her blood. Ushering the sun down to her marrow.

We were born with an ancestor lost 
in our lineage. Found in the melanin. 
Found in the rhythm of my hips.
Found in the braids I plait on Sundays.
Found, betwixt.

Our inheritance is not shared through 
grandfathers’ stories, nor rituals passed 
through hands. We have never travelled 
to our ancestors’ land. It has journeyed 
within us, will journey beyond us. 

Our bodies, strange fruit, are the places 
we begin. It is all within. All within. 
Stories of belonging belong to us all.

by Fae Wolfe