I remember Pauline Miller. Before she moved,

She lived in an understated, light green, box of house

on Raldoph Avenue.

She lived there for a long time.

Hair up

Tarp down

Pop

My mother uses her strength to cradle

Our liquid gold

Douses the pan with potential energy

And snaps the blade to its wand

The brush crackles and crinkles

Screams

My blood is not pure.

Siphoned through custom it puddles as an unholy poison. 

A mixture between castes that courses sin through my veins

Broken tradition seeps through my marrow

and pools black in the hardened pupils of my grandmother

As the years go by and we outgrow our old faces and our old skin and our old identities, 

I wonder to myself if we are really becoming new people at all, 

or if we are simply just accumulating more years and more selves