Stale blood bakes into walls.
Fresh blood is not yet hot.
'Tis the hour between inheritance and wound.
The body tired, the mind relentless.
Questions dodged all day
find one alone, without witnesses.
What was passed down:
rage folded into silence,
silence mistaken for strength,
strength that cracked the ones it held.
Is there goodness in this inheritance?
Worth wasting the dark hours panning
for gold in a river of rust?
Or spend the curse on something new —
break the chain by naming it,
let the blood cool into clay.
By four the sky begins to shift.
By five the birds don't care what was inherited.
By six, just a person making coffee,
free to begin again.