and we all swear we are never going to be like our mothers
but Jesus if i’m not the second most stubborn person i’ve ever met,
if i don’t find one thing i’m good at and let myself be swallowed by it,
if i don’t let everyone i love tear off pieces of me like a pull-apart loaf,
take my rising and turn me back to dough, all flesh and unfinished.
and i swore i was never going to be like my mother
but the odds were stacked against me, weren’t they?
we both grew up in the suburbs with mothers who loved us but gripped too tight,
fathers who loved us but whose voices sometimes grew too loud,
fucked-up siblings who swallowed the limelight like their birthright.
and i swore i was never going to be like my mother,
counted off all the things i did not want to become:
someone who gives myself to the world
and keeps nothing for myself or my family,
someone who smooths over potholes and denies the whiplash, the aftermath,
someone who insists i’m going the right direction
while the wrong-way sign glares at me like an angry eye.
but is it such a terrible thing
to give pieces of your heart away,
to make the world in a shape you can make sense of,
to love stubbornly?
and i swore i was never going to be like my mother,
was never going to become the wife and mother
with a little house in a little town with a little life,
but we are forged in the same fire,
and i am getting tired
of the heat,
and i can understand now why she wanted
that little house in that little town with that little life.
and i swore i was never going to be like my mother,
but is my mother really such a terrible thing to become?