I come 

             from the drooping sap of the apple tree  

                                 my mother climbed before she could define gravity. 

I come  

              from the rosebud on my grandfather’s grave,  

                                where the breath of the dead willed away November’s webbed frost. 

I come 

              from the ovule of the blooming grapevines  

                                 my grandmother planted with her fruitful, calloused hands. 

I come  

             from the bullet that grazed my great grandmother’s chest 

                                as she dashed for the borders, her daughter wrapped around her waist. 

I come  

             from the shriveled leather lung of the village boy’s Gaida,  

                               heavy with a hunger for a life beyond tobacco fields. 

I come  

             from the cradle of our old Thracian Land,  

                              with its gold mask draped in glass, displayed for greedy eyes. 

I come  

            from the cave of the gaping Devil’s Throat,  

                             where the stalactites grow and consume the silent void. 

I come 

            from the pulsing blood of tethered generations,  

                            warm like summer rain, rich and sticky like autumn honey.  

I am 

           the promise of our sacred, lonely land, soil drenched  

                             in unquenched tears, humid and muddy with fertility.