Russian nesting dolls of pain
Mother, if you look in the mirror under the dim yellow lights at 2 am, Do you ever feel like you're a slightly distorted, less violent version of your own mother? That you're made of the same broken shards of her tears, only in a different light? Or that the blood you pump is tainted in that same weary fluid in her womb when you resided in her, in search of a home that she didn't have too? Your words, your gaze, your voice reverberates her angry stance, Polished and garnished into an ugly blade of decades of oppressed pain, Mother, your hands do not wash the blood she painted you with. Mother, my hands tremble for I see that blood trickling into my veins too, Slowly, and steadily, slithering like a python in its firm calm embrace. The pain shivers me head to toe, flowing like an eternal river since the beginning of time, From mother to daughter, from daughter to mother, In a gyrating loop of a repeated motiff, And we're both stuck here, mother. Mother, when I stand in front of the mirror, I see my reflection tainted in yours, Your reflections tainted in your mother, Outlined and filled in a repeated motiff of hurt and pain and regrets, And an unbridled rage lodged in a brittle shell of love. Mother, are we russian nesting dolls of pain, with our mothers inside our form? I crash on the floor and you come out of my broken shell only to open your dusty lid and show me your mother inside. Hey mother, did your mother's love burn you like stepping into lava too? For, I see you mouthing my words unconsciously, unknowingly, unintentionally, As I do yours, when you cry at night spilling out all the lost happiness you could've not lost if your mother knew better, That I could've not lost if my mother knew better than what she knew to be better. And I cry out asking why did you not know better but this hollow sky answers only with rain, Mother, how could you have known better?
Mother, I hold your hand and my body shrieks coldness and hotness simultaneously, My brain overwhelms itself in understanding the contrasting extremes, As I look at your fiery eyes and find a hurt child only. Mother, we compare lives as if we're commodities in competition in a market, When we're just like each other yet so different and far apart yet so close, My head spins to make sense. Mother, I was born before my birth, in your scars, the moment you did. Mother, I do not know what can satiate this pain, But mother, I need you to see me, see me, see me. For I cannot.