Aunties are butterflies

I was still here,

healing inside a chrysalis,

waiting for a snag of remembrance

of who I once was before turning inward.

I braided these thoughts long

like the neck of a wary crane.

My medicine doesn’t always come from

a pill bottle.

Sometimes, it comes from my language,

this generational lifeline to the past.

I wish I knew more and I flush deep

like the summer berries.

I’ve never known home the way you’d think;

I only know it as the green earth

that sends me messages via storms.

This power is ancestral,

beating power into my heart.

I am made of blood and tears,

I am made of the stars and the moon,

I am made of dirt and water; the land we want back…

Everything is a circle,

I hold that dearly, like shell money;

it’s part of my design.

Filled with love, reclaiming ancient forgotten history,

I am a ceremony!

I begin, finally, to grow.

I am a dancer in my husk,

brighter than fire,

my spirit is a defender!

I am evolving with wings that will lift me

up to the sky world, where we all came from.

I am welcomed by the floral morning.

Every petal, a blessing.

Every life, a gift,

The matriarch empowers me, and I am stronger

and deeper than DNA.

I am beauty and influence.

All aunties are made this way,

wrapped up and cocooned away in a blackness

darker than raven’s feathers.

When we emerge,

King Salmon returns.

That’s how powerful the butterfly is.