Poems by Rose

Where the Inheritance Ends

 

Mama, I know now what I could not know then— 

how love can bow beneath a vow, 

how silence settles under skin, 

how staying can be sacred somehow. 

 

You stayed for us. 

I left for mine. 

 

Divorce was disgrace, 

duty called divine. 

 

You thought a mother held the house 

even when the house held harm. 

 

I was one of three, 

but I was first— 

the eldest branch bent first. 

Sister, sentinel, second mother, 

small shoulders serving every other. 

 

I learned the room 

before I learned myself, 

learned to shelve 

what I felt 

for everyone else. 

 

At your table, 

my body was not mine. 

When I vomited, 

you made me swallow it again— 

warm, wet, sour, 

obedience served for supper. 

 

Now when my daughter says, 

“I’m full,” 

I let the bread go cold. 

I let her body tell the truth. 

I let her NO stay whole. 

 

Mama, there were two of you. 

 

Honeyed voice, helping hands— 

then footsteps feared from far. 

 

They got your kindness. 

I got what kindness hid. 

 

They called you Saint 

because they never had to be your kid. 

 

Your nails left red crescents in my skin— 

small blood-moons blooming where your fingers had been. 

Now I leave crescents on my daughter too: 

lipstick-red, soft, gone with a wipe or two. 

 

Same crescent. 

Same red. 

Yours drawn in blood. 

Mine drawn in love. 

 

You left me black and blue— 

colors I had to hide, 

bruises that kept me home from school 

until the evidence subsided. 

 

My daughter and I paint black and blue now— 

black canvases bathed in blues, 

galaxies, nebulae, deep-space light 

made by hands allowed to choose. 

 

Yours kept me hidden. 

Ours hung in a gallery. 

 

Mama, you had one man 

with many forms of harm. 

I had many men, 

each carrying one shard of him. 

 

I did not repeat your marriage. 

I repeated its fragments. 

 

Mama, I think about your breasts— 

the place where hunger first is fed. 

Milk, warmth, shelter— 

then cancer rooted there instead. 

 

Not justice. 

Not punishment. 

Not debt the body earned. 

 

Only the cruelest contradiction: 

what nourished 

became what burned. 

 

And I am a mother now, Mama— 

close enough to see 

the Wife beneath the rage, 

the Girl before the Cage. 

 

But understanding does not erase 

the plate, 

the bruises, 

the crescents, 

the shame. 

 

Pain may explain the hand that strikes. 

It cannot make the striking holy. 

 

Still— 

I forgive you. 

 

Not because the hurt became sacred. 

Not because the past grew small. 

Not because death made you innocent 

of what I still recall. 

 

I forgive you because I see you 

whole enough to hold both truths: 

 

the Saint they knew, 

the woman I knew, 

the hurt you gave, 

the hurt done to you. 

 

Mama, I am ten years 

from the age you were when you died. 

 

Not mother over daughter. 

Not child beneath command. 

Just two women, 

wounds between us, 

finally old enough to understand. 

 

I would tell you I was angry. 

I would tell you I survived. 

I would tell you I became the mother 

I once needed in my life. 

 

And then I would say: 

 

I see you. 

 

I see the woman beneath Mama. 

I see the Wife beneath the rage. 

I see the frightened Girl you must have been 

before the years became a Cage. 

 

I see what you could not break. 

 

And I see what I did. 

 

So when I kiss my daughter’s cheek 

and leave a little red behind, 

I think forgiveness may be this— 

 

the bruise becoming lipstick, 

the silence becoming speech, 

the hand once raised in anger 

becoming one that reaches 

only to hold.

 

You stayed for us. 

I left for mine. 

 

And here, 

the inheritance ends.