Just now I broke a teapot.
My mind was in a spell:
The shards look back forlornly,
the cracking sound was its knell.

It was a treasured heirloom
passed down from age to age,
touched by hands from times of old
but now I’ve turned its page.

It had served my family well
etched by tea and good times spent.
For now I’ll just be grateful
that this old *** came and went.

The illusion of elegance,
copied from her mother.
Childhoods left undealt with,
but she wears her traumas
around her neck in that
beautiful southern style
passed down from her mother.
Enforces her new rules,
ignoring the past that got her there
for a new sense of priority.
Her pearls are lost,
sold long ago by someone else,
and she has forgotten
what they stood for.

dad doesn't think it's important
to address his life's trauma.

instead, he takes it, as his father did
and passes it to me with both hands flying from all sides.

mom doesn't think it's important
to address her life's trauma, either.
instead, she helps father pass it on with the,
"wait until he gets home."

she is too traumatized to pass it on herself,
not so traumatized that she can't help pass it
along with the help of another.

and i take it from them, carry it all--

finding safe places to hide it.
finding safe people to confide in
who may see the light in it--
maybe even help me carry some
before i drown in it

or worse:
before i pass it on, too.

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.

your "friends" that we meet,
i forget their names,
my calloused palms are greased,
by their  squeezing hands

i remember one's a banker,
or he could have said a thief,
his ******* words were flanked,
by my misbelief

i was held hostage,
you were a smiling drone,
i remember when i lost
to Stockholm Syndrome

their Heirloom Suffix changes,
on tuxedos and trust funds,
my rental wears just fine,
i'm not the danger

shorting stocks on tuesday,
while playing ball in hand,
what a shame to lose me,
busted seams this man

I am not a banker,
I am not a saint,
I cannot to be trusted,
I won't place the blame.
I am not a proxy,
I am an astronaut,
But this distant world you live on,
Is far from my plot

My computer rests on a desk,
This old desk is the best,
My mum bought it in 1965,
My dad painted it while he was alive,
Still wears the original paint,
Couldn't replace it, that would taint,
A family heirloom,
In my bedroom,
Yes, my old desk.
Is definitely the best!

You drop your promises like a porcelain cup;
Drink from it but you don't want to clean your mess up;
Well my heart was antique; an heirloom that's shattered;
Its pieces lie at your feet; not like that mattered.

Now that I'm broken, I'll always showcase the lines
That make up my scars; they'll decrease a hundred times
My value, to find a good home because I'm chipped;
And who on Earth would press those splinters to their lips?