dear mother, are you really mine?

sometimes, i lay my head against my mother’s chest. i think. gaze up at her. and this time, when i look at my mother, i see. i see a powerful woman. she is nothing short of beautiful. there is grace in her features; and music in her laughter. her dimples testify of the many wars in her life, the careful lines she has chosen to engrave in the depth of her cheeks. they are a defiance against this world. every time she laughs, they are her testimony, and i cannot understand how she continually refuses to give way. i will tell you, she says. this is how i have survived them. and so she does. she speaks of how her body is a canvas. from her lips she utters to me of all the secrets and stories. i have scars and bruises, she says, and they are terrible. but on her, i would almost mistake it for an embellishment; a masterpiece that any artist would take years to complete. i trace my hands along the beautiful carvings she calls wounds, and i think of how proud i am to be this woman’s daughter. i am honoured to share the same thoughtfulness behind her dark gaze, and the radiance in her smile. i want to be exactly like her. 

but then i wonder something else: it is clear she has scars, but not all of them are beautiful. i remember how she told me of all the wars she has survived, but i never asked if she was still fighting. yes, her impurities seem like perfections; i could swear that the circles under her eyes were made by a potter’s hand - but perhaps she doesn’t mean them to be. sometimes, i can almost hear the unsaid words hanging tentatively by a thread in the air between us. she strokes a hand lovingly along my back, but i wonder if once her mother did the same. i think of her as a little girl, like me. i can imagine her carefree and passionate, relentlessly happy. she has aspirations larger than the sun itself, but i will always be the moon: a mere, inadequate reflection of her light.

and now i know my mother’s biggest scar: she lost all her dreams in having me.

but perhaps her worst sin is this: she doesn’t regret it.