A History of It In the Family

I Eyes aglaze in the morning rush, suspended in thought, I stare through the window of the car, Adrift in this diffused glare of the green traffic light, I am too absorbed to go through. I have scaled life's stair to this rung where my mother stopped, doubting she could continue on, Collapsing right there in a slump, bent half-over from the fear of seeing their before her In the shape of her father on the stairs--- his grim infirm slouch, praying she would not follow after To where the ghost of him stood, starless and fearful even at that height that he still could not see God. II How old was she then when she descended back down, stumbling over words she would choke on, As she spoke of her life, regressing to the gestures of a child, spiraling through the years To where it all started, a girl lost at the bottom landing, turning with a face flushed in tears, "My father", she said, "would sit in a chair drunken fits of silence so steep he did not notice me there", "Standing in that immense air of depression, where only mother would speak, breaking the silence like a bird of premonition" "He thought his life a loss", she said "alone, and given up, he abandoned every hope I was the love of". III Was it then she bit her tongue and folding back her limbs, buried every white flower in her mouth, Extinguishing actions like words she withdrew by lantern, alone to the cavernous echoes of her soul. Is this is my inheritence, this brooding trait, this inherent sadness that states I am sole heir To my family's flawed heirloom of depression, passed down in an ambry of gene. This shell of a man, host to its genetic strand, its rogue chromosome That looks back from the mirror--- like these hands once thought mine seeming now to have always been yours.