At this reunion we will write a page of family history,

but not with paper and pen.

We’ll write it by looping the veins of a bloodline,

curving and crossing and dotting inner living flesh,

etching it with glances into pairs of blues and browns—

at once both tender and genuinely recognizable.

Our ink is the transparent salty elements

escaping roundly and fugitively from those eyes

and air-brushing wet lines, falling, heavy with their own gravity

We’ll write this page with both hands and arms wide open,

holding on for a too-swiftly-passing moment,

then letting go for fear of clutching

and needing,  and letting each other know it—

before our cheeks pink up and flush with embarrassment.

Together we’ll sign off on that document,

with many silent intricately-woven motions of hand-passed dishes,

warm and colorful and care-filled.

Most of all we’ll seal that page with the cracking whispers

we feel falling from trembling lips,

our hearts catching them before they hit the ground

or slide down the unresponsive wall behind us

God help us not to lose this page of family history

or place it in an attic of apathy,

a corner of complacency,

or even relegate it to the same dusty fate of common literature.

Rather, we painstakingly tack it invisibly and securely onto our hearts,

or slip it somewhere between the Genesis and Revelation:

the very hearth of life

We must put it where it will forever remain,

and pledge to keep on writing

Till every touch and word become part of that story

and that history becomes the very substance of eternity.