Family Lore

by Elizabeth Acevedo

it chimed like the kind of thing one grew accustomed to and learned to tune out.

Good at letting a silence unroll itself, a red carpet to his listening.

There were so many moments she’d closed and shelved, books she couldn’t finish and had never returned to.

It is my mother I want to ask about life and its disappointments. How do you learn to live with what will not be?

This is loving. The shit you’re willing to wade through.)

To have a few moments where she owed no one her time but herself was a luxury.

What did I believe was my purpose in life? What steps did I plan on taking to become myself?

Because this woman who wanted to protect me so much had let her care braid itself into a vise around my throat.

how did the person live well? How did they die well? Well loved, well departed, well farewelled?”

the sense of self they received from being part of a whole,

One thing the old people knew that this new generation forgets is duty.

I could pit myself against her until one of us shattered, or I could learn to curve.

our lives were made to intersect with other lives again and again, our spirits in the Before cosmically linked beyond the constraints of reality.

“You always did care more about what other people considered relevant than what you considered urgent.”

I don’t know many definitions of love, or not ones I can put into words. But nothing has ever felt as warm as being known so well that someone could hand you a monstrosity they made with their own hands after learning you.

They are the same world, the one before, this one, the one that comes next, a string of pearls, ends tied so tightly you cannot feel the knot that binds.

Every end is the stage for a beginning.

It was a ritual of acknowledgment. We see you, you were here, and when you go . . . we’ll remember.

Why are you trying to save someone who is fine where she is?”

The world is full of so many lies, especially the ones we tell ourselves.”

“Oh, I may not know much about living my own life, but I’m smart for others. And I know the heart is a burial ground for memories that shame and hurt.

“Would it be running away? Or would it be like those migrating birds, or salmon, who go to where they were born for the season that requires homing?

“For now, we’ll put all the feelings here between. And we’ll organize them, and keep the ones that fuel us, and mourn the ones that don’t, and process the ones that maybe we can’t let go of yet.

“I love you and every form of woman you become and unbecome.

when life and death happened was less important than how they came to pass.

sometimes starting clean meant returning to what was before.