Photo by Julianna Reidell
Great-Great-Great Grandmother: Egy
bones
bled,
skin
seeped,
a soul
slipped
from cracked
lips:
And she passed, leaving kettő
to carry her name
— but not her story —
over the sea.
Great-Great Grandmother: Kettő
fled like a fairy tale, for
stepmother’s pinches can’t reach
across the atlantic
from the Old Country
… but daring yet plain girls are only servants, not heirs, to the kingdom, and
hips and heart are already planning their ache as she begs that money be allowed for food,
precious, and necessary for all the children, swollen up inside her, but instead it goes to men
who play at dice,
and cards,
and cheat.
Great-Grandmother: Három
Older sister makes them move up,
but when older sister dies from her parasite they send her back,
down south-side,
to rest.
The first to notice her has a car,
but the car isn’t the one that gives her a son to raise, with no place but home to call her own. Second is suave,
a master in the art of nonchalance
and from him are produced two more
for her mother to rear,
for she must work,
while her men disappear.
… but she lives on and on,
until the deserters are dust,
until Hungarian flops heavy on her tongue, and három becomes merely
three.
Grandmother: Négy
never quite learns that
times three does not a charm make:
how to differentiate
lonely, and
alone, and
free.
accepts too little, needs too much, and
never stops trying to give — won’t, until Öt and Hat will watch another monarch butterfly, flap from the life-plane:
indescribable kindness,
forced to close her eyes.
Mother: Öt
the trouble
with inestimable wealth,
arises – nothing –
certainly not boys with bows or books –
ever come close
to what she deserves.
Only Hat is left to wonder,
too,
whether anyone has ever
even
tried.
Hat: The Finale
Mother Egy’s name
clicks,
but her tongue
resembles more a mess of stripped wire than a womb. … can’t fathom why a line of
women who fought produced
a girl who thrives
in a
fae
world.
And considering a dread of intimacy,
She knows —
what I know —
that there will never be another,
never Hét.
Kindergarten 