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Ancestral Hunger Feeds on Hollow Memories

by: Kayla Morgan, 2023

A free-verse poem about the bittersweetness of memories, childhood,

and sentimentality from an ancestral and familial perspective

​

As a child, I would peel layers of putrid pomegranates

and plant their forgotten savoriness in my soul. Sentimental,

for seasons of flavored fruit my body has never eaten.

My tongue craves beloved tastes under fatherly sun,

extracted from the nostalgic palm of motherly love - 

where satisfaction is more than a childbearing promise,

but a kept birthright.

​

My spirit envisions lineages to be conservative, classically

unending. My fingers were never fermented in normalcy,

but my body can't help but believe in sanity, yet my throat

detests the disappearing scent of pomegranates.

​

Spring never once blossomed into my place, No floral fruition
of familiarity, no blood blooming under the intimacy of spring.​

I can only recall the grim of pollen, its aroma, unfair and unsettling.

When new beginnings feel like death, unsolicited blessings

like nightmares - when did pomegranates become so

rotten in their ambiguity?

​

I always envies grapefruit's enrichment in tartness unconstructed:

so bitter, but dances in our mouths with sweetness soaked

in pleasure; so alluring on the mind, but unnerving on the tongue;

so flavorful in its flaws, yet enticing in our memories -

this is what you call home.

​

My pomegranates do not need to be coated from honey nectar

woven in the embracement of mother nature; Supremacy,

untampered; tenderness, unparalleled; perfection, unquestioned.

All I need is for it to purely be.

​

I can handle sour charms, the string of strange aftertastes.

But a rotting, decaying birthright is fatal. My bittersweet memories -

promised to me, and signed ancestrally, will satisfy my dying appetite.