Sharp words dig at wilted rib cage,
Where roots of searing expectations strangle lungs.
Run fingers caked with fertilizer through dark, matted hair, reflection
of her own mother pulling at worn limbs, each yank sizzling acid on forearms
Each insult jabbed into bright, dark blue veins.
My own spine, a brittle branch, grinds
against a glass door
Groaning ceaselessly beneath my weight.
Coarse hands dig into sides, search through soil for the seeds
of the daughter she never was. All she finds are a few jagged, worthless rocks.
I try to look into the eyes of the woman
who was never graceful enough, or slender enough
to appease her own mother, young girl too demure for beauty pageants and stages.
She buries the rejection beneath my skin, spends hours tending to barren land –
Never realizing she cannot shape me into what she could never be.
When her hands are covered with lifeless dirt and defeat, she spits –
Tongue thick with the grit of mistakes; pasts that cannot be changed.
Weathered lips rusted with burn of metal,
Words piled in the mouth, forced down
with shoves.
Knees waver below misty eyes, she whispers
“You should have listened to me, I was only trying
to help you.”
Crush regret between my toes like her mother did,
Fingers curling away from snarled screams
of generations –
Of mom.