You are attached to a mystical tangle of ribbons–other people’s dreams and desires. A flirtation. A wedding. Children. A funeral. And all over again. With blue eyes running along one thread, alcoholism another. Love is tangled in there too.
This is my 3x great grandfather’s house. I want to burrow into the collapse to find fragments of ribbons and broken dishes. I want to sleep in the overrun garden where narcissus mix with wild roses to listen for family spirits. I want to buy this property for no reason but the ancestral memories I half remember.
This grandfather was tied to a tree by his thumbs and whipped by the cruel man his father had hired him out to when he was six. He’d not been quick enough coming back from an errand. He stayed tied all day shoeless in the November cold. The man lashed him every time he passed while harvesting potatoes.
Grandfather spent his youth being passed around from job to job and then to the Shakers. He ran away when they wouldn’t let him flirt with the girls.
The house he built, and the flowers Grandmother planted may go away, but I carry the threads and ribbons in my soul.
