I Come From a Long Line of Hot-Blooded, Able-Bodied Women

writingsforwinter:

My grandmother was so afraid my grandfather was having an affair

that she bought a polygraph and turned it on

every time she said I love you and waited for him to say it back.

My mother came out of the womb bloody and wailing,

then stared with saucer eyes as the doctor clamped off

the umbilical cord. Years later, she has no trouble

cutting ties to anybody else either.

My great-aunt smacked her husband over the head

with a frying pan when he tried to jump off the roof,

then kissed him so hard in relief that he fell through the window

and ended up breaking his left wrist and right rib anyway.

My cousin walked forty miles through a blizzard

after getting her first period and bled into the snow

so heavily that the first couple who took her in from the storm

thought she had been stabbed in the heart.

My niece has a backbone stronger than a race horse,

and swears that her spine could carry the weight

of two tons of steel every night the tide flows in.

And me? I wish I could say I’m as headstrong and independent

as all these other women in my family,

but the truth is my worst habit is nosediving into love

instead of just falling in it.

My heart always fucks my brain over big time, and I don’t believe

that’s something to be proud of.