Ash Tree Gospel

They buried my name in a saltless grave and left my voice in the bark of an ash tree. I was born breathless, wrapped in the skin of something ancient not animal, not spirit, but a memory unfinished. I remember flames that spoke in riddles, cracking open the eyes of the sky. Clouds wept honey and blood, and the stars refused to answer why they watched. My heartbeat was tuned by bone flutes, carved from the ribs of a woman who gave birth while dying and died while still waiting to be heard. I wore the dust of ancestors like war paint each grain a forgotten story scraped from the inside of a drum. They fed me silence in polished bowls, and told me hunger was heritage. That pain was a sacred thread and I must learn to sew myself whole. But I tore the thread, lit fire to the loom, and sang the gospel of ash trees backward-until time cracked. I saw gods choking on prayers they never meant to answer. I saw white birds rot mid-flight, and I laughed with a voice not mine, but hers the mother who broke the sky with her breath. I swallowed peyote moons. I danced where shadows give birth to rivers. I kissed the feet of forgotten spirits and called them Father. There is a scream at the edge of every lullaby. A war drum buried in the hum of lullabies. And I I am that scream, disguised in feather and flame, walking barefoot through your dreams, leaving footprints that burn. When I sleep, I braid time around my wrist, and when I wake I wake as fire. I wake as gospel. I wake as the last poem you’ll never understand but never forget.