Firstborn
But he shall acknowledge
the firstborn, the son of the unloved, by giving him a double portion of all
that he has, for he is the beginning of his strength; to him belongs the right
of the firstborn.
—Deut. 21:17
This is my
blanket, my birthright:
a modest
inheritance
divided among
siblings.
We collect
memories like seashells,
we make our
homes in tide pools
and watch tiny
creatures pool at our feet
in silence. We
will keep our secrets.
When will you
learn? Your past is a gift
you cannot
exchange.
I am my father’s
oldest child.
You can tell by
our identical scars.
This is the
blanket I share with my siblings.
It covers us,
precariously.
We spend our
lives trying to hold together
our legacy of
scraps.
What do I have
to give you?
I want you to
have pristine sheets, immaculate.
I want to welcome
you into my arms with perfection,
not my patchwork
collection quilted with question marks,
the loose
threads and ragged edges,
the inherent
dissymmetry in its very fibers.
All these
fragments,
this is what I
own.
What will you
inherit?
Your smile, a certain
laugh, those unusual mannerisms—
The things that
signal where we’re from.
All those
qualities I see in others, I envy,
that certain
closeness, so thick you can wrap it around yourself.
It will keep you
dry.
There are the
things you inherit and the things you pass on.
I will build my
estate from saltwater and shells.
You will have a
room there, above the ocean
and we will watch the waves swallow up the shore.
and we will watch the waves swallow up the shore.