My Casso Your Casso

A profile carved in black,
mask-like, ancestral—
the face of watchers and warriors.
One eye rimmed heavy,
not blind,
but sharpened,
a sentinel across generations.

Fire presses from one side,
earth from the other—
the body split between burning and burial.
Yet the arms curve inward,
cradling something bright:
a seed,
a harvest,
a memory too sacred to release.

Drums pound through the smoke.
Chants rise in fractured tongues.
Elders breathe in the colors,
spirits move through the mask.

Spirits abound,
dream-realm come forth—
ancestry unbroken,
stretching back to firelit caves.

—Jon.E.B. | Lineage