Origin

I’m a self-fulfilling prophecy.

My sure footedness finds me lost and starving

Somewhere deep in the Pine Barrens

Where the Jersey Devil dwells waiting to

Rebuild me.

I am my origin.

The flitting image of my mother

Ringing with the exhausted chortles of my father,

The fragility of my sister, the violence of my brother.

There are no olives in my skin, only white tea brightened more by whiter milk.

I only ever took honey in my tea, but you know how the Brits go.

How the gravy runs.

How the crepes curl.

I am blood ripped from the roots of a willow tree planted somewhere

in the window box of a giant who can’t figure out how to twirl his spaghetti round his fork.