We wear our sagas like garments

Until they stain pages with stories longer

Than mere memory 

Deeper than day-to-day

Ghosts hitch rides on our bodies

Move inside soul 

Changing us 

Causing pain that moves 

But won’t disappear

You and I swim in ambiguity of fortune

Toward distant shores

Fully dressed and carrying the weight of

Everything that clings to us

These days we cling to each other

In the face of turmoil

Like beloved siblings

The dead should know better

But they don’t care 

They know longer have anything to lose

We, the undead are their agents

Assuring them satisfaction

While sacrificing our own prerogative 

We remove ourselves

So breezes may pass through

We endure in the name of duende

And learn to bare our lives in pain

Resolved to hide our rage

So something lost can find its way

Something meaningful can rise

Up through facades

Ancestors are restless

Duty did not die with them

Instead it searches for swimmers

Like us

Willing to take the baton

It’s what we have in common

Though everything else between us

Encircles us and draws us

Into distraction