Blue circles spread across the screen, connected by yellow lines, sinuous and meandering. Some curves are intersected by the certainty of right angles.
Near the circle that holds me is the name of a first cousin, a boy, though my only two first cousins are girls.
And there is gold stretching from me to my dad to my grandfather, but my grandfather’s name isn’t right.
My dad’s dad was an only child and his mom had six siblings; that leaves plenty of space for mysteries that connect me to the new names.
I know that it can’t really be so, yet it also must.
After taking a screenshot I close the browser window. My undergraduate degree in anthropology taught me the basics of kinship charts but I let the details float away for now, holding the image only as art.
I need to believe that maybe these maps and legends can be misunderstood.