my mother told me i'm on my third life

i guess that there was that, what nowadays passes for the usual process. the rush to the hospital, the various attentions, the happy discharge. the loving ones who wait outside to see you and exclaim how wonderful you are alive.

for my third life i was born on the 7th of july. my mom wasn't there, i met her later. but there was the same wonder - about what life must have in store for this person. and i was born with four other people:

my cousin who will teach english,
my cousin who will be a doctor,
my cousin who will maybe make things that fly,
my uncle who will build beautiful houses with a lot of light.

this time around in a kind of full circle i was born in the town of my shadow forbears. the ones you never met but insist themselves in some imprint, maybe in the downturn of your eyes or the set of your shoulders - the ones you kin by recognition because you watch for reflections. i was born in an accident similar to how my grandfather died. which is what set this thread adrift. which drift i wanted to catch in returning to his hometown, to walk his streets, to see his sights, to feel his people.

i like to think he was there for this birth, easing our way, the five of us. softening the upending splintering of the car as it rolled after being hit. easing us from the wreck. i believe he was there in the watchful eyes of my uncle who averted the worst from happening, in my cousin's presence of mind, in the love and concern of my cousins. his people, my people.

there is this thread, (how similarly we are enamored of the moon, magicked by the ambling coded morse of fireflies), that i found, that will weave into the warp and weft of this life.