Water, Kenzie Urbano ’21

Water

We all remember the line From Mrs. Smith’s 6th grade science class: “Water is 70% of who you are.” Each generation comes and goes with the pull of the tide, And none is ever lost, no, But transformed.

I walk with the tears of beaten slaves, Who cried the streams collected by native women, Whose riptides rained upon bodies lining London, Flowing through the aqueducts of ancient Rome.

And I can have my Nani’s eyes, Or my uncle’s passion for art, But if my blood holds the seas Sailed by the first brave enough to question What lies beyond the horizon, Am I not them as well?

Here there be monsters, swimming in my veins, Every sip a taste of the millions who’ve died, The millions who’ve thrived, The millions who cry the flower lost within a rainforest, The breath of a fish a thousand leagues below, The piss and bile of a neanderthal.

I am the water of my ancestors. I am the water of your ancestors. I am the tides of those to come. Kenzie Urbano ’21