somewhere in summer, where red cherries sat in a bowl, glistening, and where her skinny lemon bicycle
and her daiquiri ice top sat discarded, aside
          —somewhere in her summer she grew up.
it was in between caressing winds and delicious sunlight,
sparkling through windows, drawing locusts on her face, his face.
     it was somewhere before summer had started, rising;
          it was somewhere after summer had ended, profound sadness.
               it was summer herself, joyous and hopeful and alive and buoyant,
it was in the middle of touches and kisses and sighs that she grew up.
italy, 1984.

i hail from heat, heat
in the heart and in the home, in the head and in the heel of the
sword that swings for both justice and action.
i inherit this love, this life and these virtues like heirlooms.
i inherit this boldness from you
i inherit the air of a highborn lady, while not without the humility of a low born daughter from you
i inherit gentle hands of craft into fists of rage and fire that melt away sorrows from you
i rise and fall, for from you
i breathe.
unspoken it was passed down, and yet it stirs and whispers to me in my bones of
ancient thought and force,
passed down from kin to kin, from one blood to another of
temperance and will
that flow like tradition—
a book written on age-old sandstone pressed eons below the earth,
text mapped in bloodlines over a body, not alone. never fading.
you bid me to rise from dust and ashes into the woman of your forging,
and so with a kiss between my brow for
farewell and fortune
i may live with your light tucked into my heart,
because my inheritance lives within me.