She looks back at me
In the mornings
The face in the mirror
Tired and cross
The eyes of someone sad
The eyes of someone
Unable to understand
Her own worth

When I was her child
She looked ahead without hope
Of giving her children more than she had
For her own account was always severely overdrawn
And she worried, despaired
That the next deposit
Would never appear

She was everything I never wanted to become
But she looks hard into my depths, now,
And whispers that it’s always the same
Always the same
From generation to generation
From gene to pool
From her hand to mouth
From my pen to paper

I keep stumbling over the boulders
She’s thrown in my path
But
I keep getting up
I keep loving my own children
I keep working for the next deposit
I keep singing
I keep laughing
I keep crying
I keep fumbling with the clasps
Of the necklaces that have been passed down to me
From my mother
And my mother’s mother
And her mother before her

I keep looking back at myself
Through my mother’s eyes
Though I meant to forge a different path
I have reaped what she sowed anyway

I look around at what is thrown on the floor
The crops unkept and rotting
And I cry
Buckets, then oceans
But I am unsure
If they are her tears
Or mine

As she approaches the last years of her life
She calls me late on a Sunday afternoon
To declare her broken heart
For my pain
For what I have suffered
For what I have endured but mistaken for love
As though I should have known better
I am profoundly untouched by her agony
As she sobs and tells me she has to go
And I wonder how much more of my life
I must see
Through my mother’s eyes

12/14/2003

Posted on 12/15/2003
Copyright © 2025 Alison McKenzie