I am From Trees with Broken Ropes

I am from magazines with ripped out pictures,

Pouring out of boxes.

Tubing sprawled across a lamenate floor

Connecting to an oxygen tank.

Altars for prosperity and love

And groups of chanting people in the living room.

I am from a multitude of keys

To doors and trunks and cars

And a closet full of hippie skirts

I am from many cars

Moving between cities,

Shuffling from home to home.

Trees with broken ropes,

Once holding swings;

Cluttered garages containing:

-Moving boxes from different houses across this state

-Rusty wheelbarrows

-Disfuntional bicycles

-And a Bug Room that smells like mothballs.

I am from over-grown lawns

And hoses in the mud from failed gardening.

I am from parks and playgrounds

that never change

And the library across the street.

A Fast Stop corner store

with plenty of Milk and MnMs

And scary rap-playing cars

BLASTING steroes past midnight

I am from "goofus dancing" with Grama Pardo`n,

Making green-bean and tomato salad

with Mom and Aunt Noni.

Rice, salmon, avacado, and too much lemon pepper.

A loving grama just a phone call away,

And cooking with her caregivers during summer <3.

I am from Aunt Candy

And Marie Calendar's Boysenberry Pie;

Too much chocolate

And an outside cabinet full of dirty pool toys

I am from the wisdom of Beiny and Grama Betty:

"You make you're own good time"

And "Do your ears hear what your mouth is saying?"

From comforted tears:

"Let it be"....."It is what it is honey"

To smiling at cameras:

"Everybody say SHIT!" ... and... "It'ss BONABO!"

And dancing in the Lobby at Aunt Arlene's:

"Now that's an insertible baby ;)!"

I am from Bat Mitzvahs, Bar Mitzvahs, Failed Passovers, First Communions.

Second Communions, Splitting-up Christmases, and forgetting about Yom Kippur -again.

Crazy cousins who carry jack-knives

And then the loving ones who carry my heart's foundation

I am from a childhood stored in my heart;

Judged in my mind from time to time.

Memories in boxes and unfinished scrapbooks

at my grama's old house in San Jose -

My heart and my spirit built upon her stepping stones

THEIR stepping stones.

And a Norman Rockwell picture "perfect?" with a Twang!