Where I’m From

By: Carlie Garner

With gratitude to George Ella Lyon

I am from train exhaust, 

from overpriced ice cream and jaywalking. 

I am from coal in the fireplace and under my feet.

(Black, glistening,

It tasted like dirt and dust.)

I am from whitetail deer, 

the deciduous oaks

whose long-gone limbs I remember 

as if they were my own.

I am from generational curses and everyone knowing everyone,

from never-ending scarceness

I’m from the chain-smokers

     And the townies, 

from the lost aspirations and the broken dreams.

I’m from He restoreth my soul

      with repenting 

      and I can save myself.

I’m from historic sights,

buffalo chicken and hot chocolate.

From the windshield my grandfather lost

     to the blizzard

the ears my mother covered to keep her hearing. 

Under my loft bed was a scrapbook

Oozing old pictures

An array of lost faces

To float under my dreams.

I am from those moments –

Snapped before I bloomed –

Leaf-fall from the family tree