hermit crab life

I wonder how my mom lived
pouring her soul into the same,
small vessel day after day;
Fitting into the confines of choices
made years ago, when
consequences were just
ephemeral dreams.

And how can I, now in my own,
slightly larger and spacious surely
more refined, life continue to live
in structures I chose years ago?

Or more wildly curious, venture
to wonder how I might pour myself
out to flow through caverns,
rain onto gardens, linger as a cool
opaque forest mist, quench thirst, or
sit on grass like morning dew
....just exist.

in 20 years nothing changes

twenty years ago I was thirteen
vomiting my feelings and heart
out into an electronic void,
praying for an echo of voices
to welcome
me home
to the darkness
to the dim
night highs
where i am seen
and heard.

family ties

i sink into quilted generational patterns,
hemmed and sewn black holes,
patched together piecemeal inheritance.
you shells of humans, empty casings, breeding
without home, without foundation, without
reason, blindly follow the path laid out
-you made me.

i am driving through winterscapes
imagining my escape, vast white stretches
of scattered farms with possible hearths and
inside families, cozy and safe, and yet
distant, i am the dank boglike soil
rich under-foot, under snow.

trees nourished by its decay,
it's peat, it's me, wet and dark beneath,
keep me buried and i will feed the trees
you will rest under branches drenched in
my sweat and hot tears and rot.

shovel me up and the steam freezes
midair, i am alone, i am curled in the pattern
i spiraling the same filigree, DNA
structures and ladders.
and climbing is hard.
i just spin and spin and reweave the same section
same as my family, you, did before.