Ellis Elliott
LINEAGE
I think of Aunt Sarah,
mother’s sister, stories told
of her leaving before she even lay down
on her marriage bed. Her hair stone straight
and blue-black like mine, she’d never sent word
of her whereabouts. Sinful, they said, to just up
and go, leave everything behind. I think of her
straight spine astride an ebony horse, hair plaited
with intricate design, her thighs gripping its flanks
to gallop faster, carry her somewhere she can’t be found.
About the writer:
Ellis Elliott received a bachelor’s degree in English from Rhodes College and is currently enrolled in the MFA program of Queens University. For more than thirty years, she taught dance and owned her own dance studio. Ellis has also studied and taught yoga for the past ten years. She and her husband have a blended family of six grown sons. Ellis enjoys mixed-media art and art journaling, paddleboarding, running, kinesiology, and choreography.
Image: Black Horse by Gergely Árpád (1943- ). No medium specified. No size specified. By 2011. By free license.
