Inheritance - Meghan

It’s always a quiet message in the dark,

a notification blinking on a screen,

a voice over the line saying you ought to know,

naming the blood that runs inside your veins.

They call it an allegation, soft as gauze,

wrapped up in courtly, legalistic prose,

while behind the hedge the cameras wait like flies

to feed upon the rotten family tree.

Not all men, they sing, a tedious chorus

hummed by the ones who sit upon their hands,

yet there is always a father, a cousin, a uncle, a prince,

enough of them to sour the milk in the glass,

enough of them to make a woman turn her head

and vomit in the immaculate porcelain sink.

You build a castle out of silk and gold,

you leave the country, change your name, your clothes,

and still the old man’s shadow crawls the floor,

smelling of yellowed paper, greed, and spite.

How neatly they carve the daughter from the stone,

demand her tears, demand she answer for

the sins brewed in his tired, sour blood.

As if a daughter were a sponge for shame.

As if his sickness were her debt to pay.