The cycle

Searching through our family tree
I try to find traces of the lives that preceded me
were they all confined in a life they didn't choose
and hide behind masks of social courtesy?
The maps illustrious of a million lives
that existed and decayed
alarmingly remind me of my upcoming fate
I search for a faint flicker of hope
lying somewhere through the entangled twigs
a bad seed that has grown
somewhere
I see the eyes of those
who I could be
always searching for a place of refugee
a place non-existent
in a dream world very distant
I catch myself looking beyond
toward that same place
and wonder if that pattern will ever be broken
with an Axe
or maybe by painting a tree where only I exist
all my stakes are dangling from a fine thread
depending on this one lonely bad seed
that was cut off from the branches a long time ago
just to keep the tree fungus free
but there it lies
a bare leafless tree
that cries out
longing to get out of the paper