lineage 

there are mosquitos in chincoteague 
whose families held my blood 
in their abdomens like hot soup.
sometimes, they stand in rows 
on a screen or near a flicking porch light.
they trade stories of human dreams.
this is all that is transfered in blood,
a forceful longing. 
one mosquito says he wants to grow up
to be a brain surgeon & doesn't know
what that means. another wants to move to 
a tropical island & take pictures of the water.
the mosquitoes with my blood 
are some of the most talkative. 
they each held onto a different aspiration.
some want to write the next great novel.
some want to director movies.
then there are others who want to 
crawl back into the past. 
this causeds them to remember themselves 
swimming in their eggs. meek & wingless. 
they want to cry, thinking of themselves 
so small & their mothers & fathers 
who flew away somewhere else--
whose lives were brief.
my mosquitoes wish they were human.
they hold onto the idea of
another life after this one. 
when they drink blood
they drink stories. they try to pick 
convienent places to scratch:
the arms & tops of the legs. never neck 
or face or feet. 
they swallow the warm pulses
of sun burned strangers
each of which they fall madly in love with.
the other mosquitoes don't understand
what is wrong with them--
why they can't just eat & move on.
why they waste so much time thinking.
some of them never drink at all.
waiting on the walls of beach homes until
a hand or the back of a book 
smashes them into asterisks.
they are hesitant creatures & 
it is all my fault. one day i will go back
to where we vacationed when i was small
& full of blood & feed more mosquiotes. 
this is my only dream right now
& i feel it turning into a droplet
with legs & wings. it flies out my mouth 
& stands on the wall. a great huge mosquito
i will crush.