I’m trying to Convince myself,
not for the first time,
that if I can just get all my ancestors
to stop warring against each other
inside me, I will get better.

That until I make a truce happen,
I will be at their mercy.

That if I can calm them
and put them to sleep
they will never again make me
sit up straight in bed
soaked and desperate,
wondering who among them
from which side of the family
had spoken the death-spell
that roused me: “here you go with
that stupid half-breed shit again.”

That I have healed myself
from history and its consequences.

I’m trying to convince myself
that if I somehow put them together
to talk out all the violent years among them,
they — and I — would be OK.

That they would throw a party
to honor me.

That they would gather in a hall
somewhere to mingle and laugh,
to smudge the air and toast
the better days ahead,
waiting for the healed me
to make a great entrance
down a broad staircase.

That after everything
we’d gone through together,
I would not fling myself down the stairs
to die at the bottom among them.

See, I’m trying to convince myself
I won’t fuck it up.

That all my pain
comes from my past
and fixing that
will save me.

It’s that stupid half breed shit again,
I tell myself. The need to become
the site of the peace accord.
The broker between the factions.
The broken one who heals all
and himself in the process —

but once again
I’m sitting up in bed
soaked and desperate
with no one but myself
to blame, and I don’t even know
who that is.