Mud-Born, Sky-Bound

I come from dirt that remembers every name it swallowed.

Red clay under the nails,

a rusted plow singing in the wind like it still believes in work.

Granddad’s boots by the door —

their tongues dried stiff from rain and silence.

Mama’s prayers hung in the rafters,

smelling of biscuits and lightning.

Sometimes I swear I still hear them crackle

when thunder rolls over the pines.

~~~

Roots run like rumors through my ribs.

They whisper of who I was before I began,

of men who fought wars and lost their laughter,

of women who turned grief into gardens.

They keep me here,

steady as a gravestone no one visits but God.

~~~

But branches—

they’re the restless part of me,

always reaching for sky even when the sky looks away.

They creak with hope, with hunger, with the weight of every

“maybe next year.”

They’re the part of me that won’t stop writing,

even when the ink runs thin,

the part that still believes forgiveness

is just love that learned to grow legs.

~~~

Some days I feel torn between the two—

one pulling me under,

one pulling me through.

I dig to rise,

I climb to stay.

And somewhere between the roots and branches,

I find the pulse of everything I’ve ever been—

mud-born, sky-bound,

still praying with my hands full of earth