If only your mother had been a waterfall or a strawberry bush, a flock of albatross with sun woven into their veins. If only your father cried, even once, or saw a mug of coffee perched in moonlight and exclaimed that's beautiful enough to paint. Haven't you realized? Everything you did not inherit went to someone else. No matter what language you speak they’ll open your jaws wide and bare witness to your family tongue, your ancestral molars. Can you ever forgive your grandfather for painting your eyes the wrong color, or your grandmother for never laughing? Maybe you could have been born laughing, but your heirlooms were air and you were taught thankfulness for lungs to breathe it. The truth is no inheritance is owed. Stop staring at the horizon, it is not yours, never will be, you come from people who gaze at the land. The world is not taken, it's passed. Even if you whet an axe, sever your lineage, blood is awfully hard to clean, the stains will remain and one day they may be all you have left.