I am a child of story,
Born of the tales woven into my life
Each story glitters among the flat colors of my childhood
Golden among gray,
Meticulously woven with love
 and sorrow
    and joy
       and laughter
           and tears
by the cadence of my grandfather’s voice.

His mind spun
The raw material of his memories,
Into finely-made, sparkling tales that
He masterfully wove into our lives
         over
       and under
     and over
 and under
As my cousins and I looked on, his apprentices in the art of story.

We spent our days sequestered away
Spinning our own tales,
Woven by fumbling hands about
Stolen ruby gum and cheetahs on ice,
In the confines of an attic
Packed with raw story material
 of family pictures
    forgotten clothes
       peculiar cooking utensils
           and antique typewriters
That made our stories glimmer faintly, hidden among the monotony of life.
   
We didn’t know it then,
But the starry tales,
Discreetly entwined around our lives,
Would reveal themselves as we crafted our own stories
          of fables
       of dramas
     of tragedies
  of rebirth
And we would find that the lives we’d found so dull
Shimmered with new found light,
Born of the tales woven into our lives.

We are children of story.