tonight i miss my mom

tonight i miss my mother as if i am grieving her death.   i see her body in the casket of our inherited rage,  dressed in garnet remorse and untimely age.   in a way i am grieving my own life,  because my mother is the cornerstone of my entirety.   so when i exhale late-night smoke,  my reddened eyes gloss over while i think of everything i regret saying to her.   then i cry.   i cry like a child for the first time in months,  as if i am baptized into my birthright.   surrounded by the damp emptiness of an absent god.   i realize we are the succession of wounded daughters becoming scarred mothers.   i still sob,  and i scream,  and i mourn.   i mourn the feeling of her hugs when i was small:  her motherly warmth shrouding me from my fate.   i mourn her in the graveyard of our genetic distaste,  our tombs side by side.   we are simply replicas of every mother that has lived in the body of a hurt daughter.   tonight i miss my mom and i grieve the death of the daughter she never had the chance to be.