Boxes

Her back nearly broken under the weight of the lessons of her mothers
an iron box big enough to hold the family balanced there.
Shifting her shoulders under the load, feeling the pinch and the blister,
adjusting and fitting against the pull of time and anguished prayer.

Loaded with values, shoulds, and the repeated "you must remember who you are."
Mother shifted it onto my shoulders, left me with this and to proclaim
"Remember where you come from,
and the fragile value in your name."

I saw in her eyes the strain of that box, and took it on, knowing it was my time.
Until I set it down to see what would happen.
No headlines appeared in the newspaper,
and no whispers reported my crime.

Before, it had threatened to topple and take me and the family to hell,
for every transgression and temptation I pondered.
It was something of which I'd been warned --
more times than I could tell.

She's gone now, and with her, the lost years of bowed head and pitiful care.
Now there's no need to tell her that the box, once opened,
released the rules
to float away in the air.

She speaks to me in whispers and shows me my path is clear,
and that the box was full of nothing
but expectations and shadows
of those things once counted so dear.