Indian Princess

grandma
told me stories
of generations past
and my great great great grandmother
Princess
born of the Blackfoot tribe, but then
ancestry-dot-com and
my dna
cried myth

I wonder how many other little girls grew up listening to family tales of Native American royal lineage? Even after I grew up and realized that I wasn’t a real “princess”, as my grandma used to call me, I still believed in my many-great, princess grandmother. That is, until a thorough search on ancestry.com revealed the truth.

In fact, there was no Native American streak to be found in the strands of our DNA. Not a drop. The stories of my Indian Princess great, great…great was no more than a fantasy, like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. To soften the blow, I did discover a few notable people in my family tree. Saints, sinners, pilgrims, soldiers, writers, and philanthropists. Given who I am and who they were, where I come from, and who I come from, actually makes more sense to me now.

But there are still nights when the fireflies are legion, the smell of smoke from fire-pits is wafting through the neighborhood, and the low, droning click of cricket song hums from the misty hollows of the hedgerow. On those nights I remember my grandma Mary’s stories and I think about my great, great, great Blackfoot grandmother, who never was, and I miss her.

~kat

And there goes a Butterfly…Cinquain, that is, for NaPoWriMo 2018 – Day 17 Prompt: write a poem re-telling a family anecdote that has stuck with you over time.