A Line Touches Me Poem by Charlotte Ballard

A line touches me
A deep scarlet one
Of race and family
Of clan and breed.
Unchosen, some say
A defining shape
Given around a curve
Of color, of pain,
Of a past not explored
Or known, by choice.

A lift of a chin, a soft
Turn that could be
A swirl of a dance -
That oldest one
That got Adam
In so much trouble.

Who gave me that
Brow, or the length
Of my calf, and the
Curve that invites
A male hand there?

Would I have lived her, in
The rough place between
Two molars? My tongue
Lifts and tilts a rumbling
Place hidden in clefs
And D minor notes
Phased in and out,
Like a dance, that
Other one, too.
Where is my place now -
When ancestor breathe
Their promise inside?
The dance completes
In my own daughter's smile.