Half awake, half asleep, he said “tell your kokum’s story. Tell it truthfully and deeply”.
My moshom visited in my dreams, but what are dreams? What are memories? Listening I think:
I see furling mouths of kin. At times, teeth were visible refracting laughter, and at others, lips furled in silence. I see sheets of paper that get curled, rolled around some good medicines proliferating the air, this boundless place. I see fingers wrapping and toes tapping. All these folds - where the curls meet - teach us to stand, and when we move, to move as us.
Every smudge, no matter where, I am at home,
medicine
is palpable like gripping the handlebars of a quad. They are imaged, made up of the floral
and berry motifs in beadwork that my ancestors pieced together, bead •-•-•-•-• by •-•-•-•-• bead -
My hand focuses on tending, and tenderness, asking what that means to come together,
Slow down to find the paths, the highway lines that pinpoint a direction.
In absence, in silence, in noise there is texture of memory and the think with a tau(ght)t perspective
and within my centre lies
a thousand stars, a thousand beads, per line
Bio:
Zoe Cire was born and raised on Treaty 6 territory of central Alberta, Canada. Her works talk with her culture, her kokum’s lineage of Beaver Lake Cree Nation and moshom’s Métis lineage. Here, relations speak about language and memory, where it can be found, and what it says when it reaches.