Heredity

As the roots of my blonde-encroached hair grow

and expose their untainted jet black hue, my mother

and her mother’s and her mother’s heritage appear before me,

their insurmountable resilience and their faith,

are embedded within the divinity of a

seventy-microns-strand where magnanimity

culminates and my wins, loss, successes, fears

formulate its atomic structure.

I have been the fool who has fallen prey to

ideals of futility, as the bleach has diminished and

degraded my mother, her mother, and her mother’s tenacity.

Nonetheless, I progress.

I have been ignorance,

scornful as well. But I have been success,

an arrogance of sorts, as well. From my mother’s humility,

to my father’s pride, I am their heredity.

The western tissue has attempted to immolate the jet-black

expression of my hair, disguised behind the notion of assimilation,

of obstinate, invulnerable conformity.

but it will not conquer.

Still, the all-severing time seems to subdue

my ignorance, for I am not more a burden than

I can bear myself.