i am nothing like my mother
the first truth i knew well
because her olive black hair was thick and silky
and smelled vanilla sweet
and softly bounced upon her shoulders
in one gentle sweep
and i always recognized it from the back
when searching for her in a crowd
and it was easy
because it was not mine
mine is cherry-tinted, spider-web fine
smells only of today’s shampoo
cuts off right above my ears
weightless and freeing and divine
“i am nothing like my mother”
i said whenever someone told me i looked like her
because it was my father’s smile on my face
and his name i bore with mine
i said i had his sense of humor
his sense of adventure
his anger
his courage
never her dullness
or her smallness
her cowardice
or her ignorance
this was all she was to me
and i was nothing like her
i am nothing like my mother
is what i knew
when she spent hours obsessing over her appearance and her possessions
when she held in any breath that carried passion
when she dreamt eerie dreams that made no sense
when she became not a person but a ghost in the house
when she said she knew me
and i replied
“you don’t know me—
i am nothing like you”
“i am nothing like my mother”
an echo sounding through the generations
as untrue as in the last
she says it, too, my mother
in her mother’s voice
tossing back her mother’s hair
rolling her mother’s eyes
because our mothers were too perfect
too unmaternal
too unknowing
too unreal
yes, i am nothing like my mother
and yet we grew up sharing
music and movies and books and art
because i wanted to love all the things she loved
and her jewelry i scorned
now dons my neck and wrists
and although she always hated my laugh
and i her sense of humor
our jokes come now as a duet
so tell me
how could i be
nothing like my mother
when she raised me with
her hardness and her softness
her earthy strength and her cracks
her dreams and her nightmares
her creation and her destruction
her memories and her fantasies
her unconditional love
no matter how much i tried
to forget the parts of her in me
i couldn’t
and although the both of us have left behind
everything we ever knew
over and over again
we have never left behind
the other
or our foremothers
and now i know
i am everything like my mother
Cover Photo Source: Dhaka Tribune