by Rebecca Beardsall

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

______________________________________________________________________

Pull my bones from the pebble shores of Lancashire.
Plait my hair with flecks of auburn from the grasses of Donegal.
Push my muscular frame from the Rhine
onto the ringing rocks of Pennsylvania. My
feet sink into black sand; Tasman Sea
leaves a layer of salt on my knees. Face of
freckles emerge like southern hemisphere stars. Layers
of lands live inside me, and I search like a Saturniidae moth
ancestral spirit returning. Sepia spirals
mark my wings with amber, burnt umber.
Warm spring rain sinks into paddock soil
submerges and expels into North Sea, Atlantic, Delaware,
Irish Sea, Pacific, Rhine, Schuykill, Tasman Sea.
Lines of lineage—currents and undercurrents
surface in my eyes, shape of my nose, space of my teeth
Confirm and baptize me into my new, renewed—marriage merges me.
I stand on these Pacific shores, not the shores of my ancestors.
Tell me I am home.

______________________________________________________________________

Rebecca Beardsall (MA, Lehigh University; MFA, Western Washington University) is the author of The Unfurling Frond and My Place in the Spiral. Her current nonfiction work explores her hybrid life as a transnational and explores settler colonialism. Rebecca is an editor, coach, and teacher. She teaches MFA-Style courses for writers. Find out more at rebeccabeardsall.com.