Lullaby for the Wrong Child

Lullaby for the Wrong Child

My mother sang a lullaby each night.
A melody she said she made up herself,
but the words were in a language
she did not speak and could not translate.

She learned it from her mother
who learned it from hers.
A chain of women singing sounds
they did not understand to sleeping children.

I recorded her singing it once
and ran it through translation software.
The language was pre-Columbian.
Dead for eight hundred years.

The translation was fragmented
but what came through was clear enough:
Come back to us, we miss you.
The door is still open in the floor.

The lullaby was never meant to soothe.
It was meant to guide you downward.
The lullaby was never meant for you.
It was meant for what sleeps beneath you.

My mother died singing it.
Last words on her lips,
that ancient melody
directed at the ceiling of the hospice room.

I caught myself humming it last week.
The same melody, the same dead words
coming from my throat without permission
while I stood over my sleeping children.

My mouth knew the words
the way my body knows to breathe.
An autonomic inheritance
passed through the blood and the vocal cords.

I recorded myself singing it
and the translation software found new words.
Words my mother never sang.
Words that my throat added on its own:

The child is ready.
After all these generations,
the child is ready
and the floor is opening.