Not Bred for the Sun

Like Icarus, I flew to close to the sun for my roots take hold underground... Deep underground... just like my mother’s forefathers mining in the hills of Kentucky. The sun didn’t rise in the hollers of my ancestral home until the lunch bell rang and tended to wane before dinner was served. I was bred to haul coal from dark until dark.

My skin was made thick to endure the sting of union buster sticks. Living in a town never meant for me, my soul was sold before my grandfather was even born. A gift of black lung and a half pack of Lucky Strikes awaited me on a dreary Christmas day.

I was supposed to stay in my hole.

My father’s kin didn’t fare much better; some would say they did much worse. Shoeless and dusty faced on the muddy banks of the Flint. It was hardly a river, little more than a creek most of the time, but it was also barely a family when I stop to look back. A last name of no merit, no nobility, no home.. only a trade. I was bred to toil in that mud.

I tried to flee that primordial pond in which I was spawned but it keeps dragging me back. Clawing and gnashing at the world around me. I was never meant for the sun. My skin was made pale, only to be darkened by soot and dust. My hair made blonde to cut through the darkness and lead the way deeper into the bowels of my home.

I was bred to live in hell.