Holda named my kin Kunkel: versed their daughters how to value poverty, bathe in soil and sweat, swallow what would choke, love always at arm’s length. My mother broke the rules: taught me how to cry, dream of ivory towers, grasp love and language as spans of the same thread. Even so, I feel fibers of my ancestors catch, flax, lamb’s wool pull me into cemetery records, my mother’s tight chest where our family bibles lie. The names of shadows drafted spun tight wait to be drawn by my shuttle-tongue woven into my revised blood-line.
Mary Elzabeth Lee enjoys sharp cheeses, sharp tongues, and sharper wits. She lives in Red Lion, Pennsylvania and attends Penn State York where she is the student editor of Any Other Word.
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