“dark, broken and bent and resting against a rusty barbed wire fence it looms hauntingly; every branch sharp as a blade and every dead and dying leaf bears a blood stain”

I re-trace the steps of my ancestors past
down the rabbit hole and back from the brutal
and bloody battles fought and lost within
the minds and flesh of mad men and their demons
who chose or didn’t choose to became fathers
sowing their seeds to sprout as weeds growing
much like these; wild and ragged through the cracks of
the broken sidewalks I walk in dark dreams
stepping on each one hoping to break the backs of
mothers that never were

and maybe free the children or child that never was
who lived or didn’t live mostly as reminders of the painful ghosts
that can never be escaped nor healed their flesh forever marred by
the future of their ancestors’ scars

©Debbie Berk