The Ancestral Voice

I hear them in the hush between,

where wind and wonder meet.

Their echoes thread through roots unseen,

through rhythm, rain, and wheat.

My father’s hands still shape the loam,

my mother’s breath still bends the flame.

Their whispers build the walls of home,

though none now call it by that name.

I wear their memory like a mark,

a secret song beneath my skin;

the world sees daylight, not the spark—

the quiet fire I keep within.

Their stories live in seeds and stone,

in silvered songs the night recalls.

I feel their footsteps in my own—

their shadows written on my walls.

I’ve learned the art of quiet things:

to plant, to sing, to let things be.

Each gesture that the season brings

becomes a kind of liturgy.

Yet still I guard what can’t be shown—

their faith, their fear, their tender art.

To speak it whole would break the bone

that shelters them within my heart.

Their language lingers in my skin—

its vowels of grief, its consonants of grace.

And when I speak, they breathe within,

their light returning through my face.

For I am not the first to fall,

nor last to bloom, nor bound to stay.

I am their echo, after all—

their hymn of dust, their bright decay.