Recently, my mother asked me, 

“What am I going to do when my life is my own again”?  

 

She’s been mine for so long that she is no longer hers. 

 

She used to be the one to tuck my unruly hair behind my ears and  

back then, I would quickly mess it up again just to  

spite her.  

But now, I find that I’ve begun to tuck my hair all by myself.  

 

If she had a life of her own, 

I, simply, would not be. 

But maybe she would. 

 

If I could meet the girl  

who wore her skin when she was my age, 

I’d like to think that we would have been friends. 

She’d tell me all about her wire sculptures 

and the movie she had seen the night before.  

She would take me out for cherry slushies and maybe 

I could get to know my grandpa’s garden, 

the one he grew before he was gone. 

 

To see my mother without motherhood, 

To see her lean over a river 

And wash her hands clean  

of the cage I built for her in this life of mine, 

To see her rinsed clean, would be truly knowing her.  

 

Together, for now, my mother and I will pretend this cage is not so. 

Why couldn’t we both have been girls together?