Many times, you’ll travel back     even as

you unravel the stitches of a family’s warp

and weft     the patterns woven into you

 

you’ll be held        even as you’re pulling

away     from the long tightening threads

of distance and generations       held even

 

when they die     you’ll grieve their vivid light

and rusted darknesses     the dust and sadness

of their losses       the old lives lived so that

 

you could.     Held even as you free yourself

from the fastenings drawing you back

to them       making you small again    

 

pulling away     from those first promises

they’d wanted from you      from a country

you’d need more courage (or blindness) for

 

to stay     your hunger for a different life

from what is woven into you and which

they’d never really wanted for you.

 

You will return, a visitor      some threads

will be wires of grace      others, of shame

for there’s never a clean, clear severing

 

the cloth from which you were cut

is strong     though your story stays ragged    

even as you break free      uproot yourself

 

finally: on an afternoon in Sydney, 

thunder, darkening clouds, hail-dredged

wind from the south reminding you

 

how even a roughened weave made from

new thread    inclines its tensions to unravelling