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