My Mother Sculpted Me From Light

My mother sculpted me from light

Though I was born dark-haired and proud

(Which is why she gave me my middle name

Which means dark-haired and proud).

My mother sculpted me in the image of my father:

The only man we knew

Who was more light than dark 

and rather less Blue

Than we were as women

Frantic and tiresome

As women should be;

Or as my father claimed, at the very least,

That we are “despondent

And blood sucking beings.”

But there is a lightness

To the sucking of blood

That my father has yet to know.

It is not the lightness of spirit

But the lightness of our bones

(Our physical lightness

As metaphysical beings).

Which fades a little as we grow

To remain a stage of lightness a little less new.

And as my mother sculpted me

I sculpt my daughter, too -