I feel them as a circulatory system, as an intricate web of veins and arteries.
Two main lines connect me to this web from behind.
These lines meet at the center of my being, at the heart that has nothing to do with blood.
They extend outward from my back, one each for my mother and my father.
These lines split into new ones, connecting to the mother and father of my mother, and the mother and father of my father, and so on and on and on and on, intermingling along the way with all the lines of lives past,
until all they meet at the heart of creation.
This heart I carry in my chest is only mine for now,
until I become a line in this web,
an avenue to the perpetual, spiraling heart center of all life.

My heart beats for them, their heart beats for me.

© Megan J. Alexander