Moonlit

My mother prefers the night,

claims the moon for her own.

Her mother embodied the sun

both in her light and in the way

her glare could blind the wicked.

My great-grandmother, a woman

who swallowed lightning twice,

raised her girls to be as fearless

as they were resilient. Lightning

eluded a generation, found itself

in my mother. Any time our father

tried to bring his storms upon us,

he never predicted for our mother

to strike first, to split his stature

like an old tree, leaving us girls

to stand under her beautiful moon.