Generations

My great-grandmother told us tales of nights spent carrying
her eldest daughters on her back across miles of forest,
of spreading their limbs like starfish to crack their backs
until they cried out and fell asleep. I was taught that mothers birth pain
like islands birth the seas they fall victim to.
Whenever I find shipwrecks embedded in the shore, I am reminded
of those midnight rides that taught my mother how
to identify the tree rings most likely to atrophy or rot.
Those nights that taught her how we were like those rings:
counting up her years of life, ready to cut her down
or send her back into the earth.
The other day I fell asleep to one man
and woke up to another with hands curled around my waist
and realized that my great-grandmother
taught me everything I know.
That falling in love is a journey spent carrying doubt
like stones across your back,
that falling in love means giving yourself
to the one person who will either strip you down to the roots
or build each of your limbs back up into the sky.
That the child you make together
is the only form of art you will never want to sell.