She’s an abstract idea,
far from the nurturing or warm ideal of a first home;
a garden without a gardener.
her cruelty echoes,
screaming anxious obscenities in my mind, making me question my own motherhood.
I fear self reflection and the inevitable discovery of the same seed,
left unchecked,
taking over the entire emotional ecosystem within,
repeating the history she herself repeated.
but I don’t want my children to fear me,
and I don’t want to hate myself.
And denial of our similarities only paves the way into becoming everything I despise, everything I feared as a child.
So I force myself to look,
to see the ugliness of the weeds that have taken over and pilfered resources from the parts of me I wish would grow, and
I force myself to dig, extracting them by the root,
lovingly coaxing them to release their grip,
before setting them aside for good.