My Mother’s Daughter
By Coco Bone
I have always been told I am
my mother’s daughter and I think
she might hate that about me.
Every insult she makes toward
her own body is followed by
a comparison of how much smaller
than me she is,
Then she wonders why I
struggle so much to look at myself in
the mirror.
She will point out every facial
feature or similarity we share
and proceed to turn around
and call herself ugly.
But oh how she cries
how sad she is that I don’t find myself
beautiful.
But I am also unequivocally
my father’s daughter,
And I see her look at me with
the same disappointment.
I hear it in the way she tells me
that she thinks my dad must
hate himself for his refusal to
stop drinking as she drives
me home from the bar.
I pick up on it in the way
she will tell me everything
she believes is wrong with him
and then mutter ‘you are so your father’
when she thinks I can not hear.
And I can feel it burned into my
skin every time I refuse to talk
to her about it bothering me
out of fear of being called cruel.
I think maybe when my mother
looks at me she sees in me
everything she hates about
my dad and everything she
dislikes about herself.
Meanwhile I look at her and see
everything I am scared that I
am destined to become and everything
I will never live up to.