by Hana Sheedy-Corrado
My father’s mind is a cathedral of pages.
From Poe to Melville, Beckett to Faulkner, Jung to Huxley,
he’s read it all once if not twice.
He believes in the art of sitting,
Buddhist concepts of life and death.
He comes from devotion,
yet carved himself a different path,
turning from the altar
without losing his sense of awe.
My mother’s mind is a lantern held in the dark.
Though she’s read all of the greats,
she has a lust for knowledge of what comes next.
She’s curious
and walks in the realm of the beyond.
She grew up among prayers,
yet wouldn’t claim belief in “God,”
only an awareness of something more,
watching, unnamed,
just beyond reach.
I am a mix of my mother and father.
I will spend my days reading Camus and Didion,
Dostoevsky and Kafka,
and my nights reading Aurelius and Dispenza.
I want to read every book my father has read
and walk down every dark alley
lit by a candle from my mother.
I grew up in Catholic school,
but the last thing I will ever do
is subscribe to Roman Catholicism,
or the idea of that cruel “God”
that was painted before me.
I light sage every Sunday.
I speak to the moon.
I have both my mother's and father’s hunger for knowledge.
I will not be stopped.
I refuse to accept the idea that anything is casual,
but rather dance with the idea
that everything has meaning
and can become poetry
if you grieve it.
I walk alongside
the ghosts of my mother's and father’s childhood selves,
doing everything they couldn’t do.
My mind is a wild altar,
an unfinished scripture.
Written in the blood of those who came before me,
books, Gods, and ghosts are all welcome,
but nothing will be worshiped blindly.
~
Hana Sheedy-Corrado is a yoga instructor and a student at New York School of Interior Design.
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