I hate to imagine the times
I made my mother cry
behind the closed door.
She wanted to see my face
when she looked
at her reflection,
but I was on the other side
of a two-way mirror.
I didn’t want to look like her,
after seeing her twist and turn
her magnificent features into
what everyone else needed
to see so they could
run over her, deform her,
convince her she was inferior.
She was so afraid to lose them
she called it love
at her expense.
Her cost of living
was beyond my means,
more than I could
trick my eye into
believing.
Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash
