It’s been awhile since I’ve seen you,
a couple weeks, maybe a month.
Most kids I talk to mention their’s at least once a day while I stay quiet.
Frankly, I can’t complain about you being overbearing or whiny or b****y because I simply don’t see you enough to come to that conclusion.
Mom, it’s been a long time since I’ve called you that name and it actually meant something. But it’s okay, we’re both used to the gap that now serves as a valley between us.
When you left ten years ago, I was barely keeping it together,
I didn’t know how to function and I know you were hurting too. But I’m sixteen, not six. I’m sixteen and I have my own dresses, instead of wearing yours,
I’m sixteen and I’m learning how to drive, not how to write my own name,
I’m sixteen and now I drown my sorrows into a bottle, instead of your arms.
You tell me you're stuck in the past, that when you dream of me I’m six and little and I’m your baby girl.
I was six when you left and I’ve changed.
Eight, and I cry wondering where you are.
Ten, and you listen to me on the phone at night, clinging to my small voice.
Twelve, and you see the darkness in my eyes, you wonder who I’ve become.
Fourteen, and I’m polite but distant yet you still see flashes of who I used to be.
Sixteen and
You can’t look at me. You see a stranger and yet she looks all too familiar, almost like
Seeing yourself from the past.
I look at you and I see the nights I spent crying, the questions I kept asking, “Why?”
I look at you and wonder where it all went wrong
I look at you and I don’t see my mother, but instead, a stranger.
Maybe one day when I look at you, you can look back at me too.