Family Tree by Olivia Grace Viteznik
My bloodline haunts me.
Thick and red.
Stretching far past my gaze.
Pulled taut, as though a runner should triumphantly tear through it.
Yet it hovers behind me,
inching forward with every loss
insisting that it will one day snap against my back
to leave its mark
and drop me to the ground.
No matter the circles I run
its presence is unrelenting
in a void of its creation.
I’m dragged to it in times of celebration,
like weddings or pregnancies,
when I cannot help but imagine my own.
Until Loneliness delivers me before it,
the Ferryman of a realm so dark and chilled
it swallows all sense of direction.
I envy people who talk of their family trees.
I cannot find mine.
I catch glimpses of it though,
within the chicken scratch of my father’s recipes
and the glint of my grandmother's rings.
It makes a golden light, warm and almost blinding
like a sunset on mercury.
It, too, stretches past my gaze,
but far above into The Beyond
and deep below to What May Be.
Its trunk is as wide as my grandfather’s lake house
with syrup colored wood to match.
Its branches sprawl in every direction.
I know not what it grows
be it fruit or flowers,
but whichever it is
it is abundant.
It sways
it lives
far before me and far after.
Distant, but present nonetheless
and closer with every fond memory I find.
As I run from my bloodline,
I venture to my family tree.
“This poem was built painstakingly slow, written and rewritten line by line. I have a habit of leaning toward the melancholy in my art, and this was made with the goal of finding optimism in grief. Though I’m outwardly a bubbly person, it feels awkward to incorporate that into my poetry since so much of art praises “tortured artists”- as if you can only be deep by being somber.”
Olivia Grace Viteznik (she/her) is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Maryland Chapter and the asexual community. Inspired by her theater background, fantasy worlds, and hair dye, Olivia fuels her writing through eccentric self reflection. Her debut poem, Coronation of the Damned, was featured in the sixth issue of Spare Parts Literary Magazine. Instagram: @0liviav (with a zero)