The seed of wrath roots in her stomach,
the seed of a sin that grows into a daughter.
It’s a sin that swells, splits the womb and sprouts,
all teeth, all sour, all ugly things to the core.
My bitterness is my mother’s heirloom,
a relic of her unspoken labor,
a silence carved from the marrow of rage,
rage shaped into a compliant shape,
rage taught to swallow like rotten fruit.
She gripped my hand as if it were a trophy,
not flesh, not bone, but her own dream.
Until she saw I was not gold, but steel,
cold and unyielding, a mirror too sharp,
a bird too free and a fox too sly.
Now, she hungers to devour me,
A failed chance, a flawed reflection,
A desperate clawing for what she lost to me.
“You could be anything,” she says,
while staring at herself in the kitchen mirror.
But contrary to my mother,
I never believed I could be anything.
I could only go so far as being me,
a self she cannot claim,
a seed she cannot uproot,
the bitter fruit she never knew.
Ainhoa Rey Cuesta
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