the roots

my mother once told me
that she had some distant
jewish ancestors, but that
little addition to the cocktail
that flows through my veins
hardly makes me a jew.
funnily enough, a feature
of my anatomy makes me
look like one and it did
not even require a mohel,
i was born that way.

my father once told me
that his father’s ancestors
came from the nobility
and his mother came from
an even more noble family.
it is puzzling, though, that all
this blue blood did not prevent
the proud men from drinking
their lives away and i nearly
ended up the same way,
a true son of my father.

and i once told myself
that i would never be
a faceless one in the crowd,
but only true to himself
individualist. it is hard
to suspect a ten-year-old
of contempt for people,
so it must have been
my naiveté stimulated
by the books in which
i escaped from my identity.

one might ask why am i
revealing these details?
the point is, i do not know
who i am.