If ink onto paper isn’t enough
If your black blood onto the sheet
Won’t suffice
You ink your skin.
I did, family crest
For a family spread the world over.
Related by blood
Black to crimson and back again.
Families change
Families grow
Families explode into a hundred pieces.
Brothers and I stitched a picture
Had it fixed upon our skin
A reminder of a past together
Where everything was safer
And we could explore forests in the dark.
The only fires worried about
Was the one that burnt our camp food,
Not the one that started in the shadows
To render home into ashes.
So no matter how we scatter
To make home for ourselves,
We’ll always find a safe place
In each other, in arms
In eyes commonly blue
And in backs commonly emblazoned
With lions and spears and shields.
And grace, most important of all.
Grace for ourselves and each other,
For how we’ve hurt one another,
And for our dad, gone under the pen now too.
Grace for him especially.
He’s hurt us all so deeply
But he still gave us our ink,
And ink is thicker than water.
– Vagabond Prophet
Vagabond Prophet 