before my first breath
a memory long distilled from my cells
yet remaining as story told through human history
I was alive some would say my self there inside
I am not sure and I don’t need to know
one way or the other my mother
let the tunnel of my becoming open
providing me this way through life
she did not agree never said so but it was there in every beat of her heart
I was not right the kind of right that was what she imagined for a daughter
so she had another
lo and behold perfection isn’t that the way along the roadside decades on she stoops
for this is all she can do anymore picking up fragments of memories calling me
beautiful talented so proud never again referring to the phrase passed through the tube to my ears
I thought you’d never amount to anything