Family

Family is …
far away places.
You can taste…
the long journeys in sea salt,
pouring hard down our faces
in the tears we cry.
We embrace,
now we are safe.
Family is when you find space,
in someone’s heart to call home.

Family is England.
It’s the abandoned mines.
It’s the lapping docks,
the once ticking clocks,
in pulled down houses,
on streets now forgot.
It’s your dad’s wrinkled hands
From a time that’s now lost.

Family is sacrifice.
It’s what has to be done.
Family is breaking bread,
and butting heads.
Its your mothers’ mother tongue.
It’s your first bedroom,
and knowing who your parents where
when they were young.

Family is history repeating.
It’s trying to be different.
It’s not passing the trauma,
To your only daughter.
It’s accepting the past,
because she still laughs like somebody else,
that came before her.

Family is the water, that washes away
the trail of blood that didn’t stay.
It’s the choices you made,
the paths that you laid, all the people
you loved and the people that saved
you.

Family is leaving behind,
but it’s never goodbye.
It’s the last lunch receipt in your purse
it’s the tear in your eye,
when you lay in the bed,
where you learned that she died.
It’s the person you are,
because you just happened
to be alive at the same time.

Family cuts the crusts off,
and can’t always remember what it’s like to be young.
It knows the oldest person sits in the front.
Family is holding your tongue

Family is impatient, relentless,
it’s static and fluxx,
It’s burping and singing
and getting unstuck.

My family’s from dance halls,
and unions.
From resilience and pain.
From bar brawls,
and pub crawls.
It’s more than a name.

It’s more than semantics,
or the hereditary chin,
It’s the places you’ll go,
And the places you’ve been.

Family expands like the universe
and pulls back like the tide.
Family holds you tightly,
when the planets collide.