“My Mother’s Eyes” by Katherine J. Chen, NYC

topic: CHANGE medium: TEXT

My mother once saw me for who I was.
It was as if she had prepared herself –
had made the resolution to see her child not as a part of her body
but as a stranger, unconnected, with no memory of having breastfed me
or clothed me, or having waited at the gate in my father’s winter boots
as I kept her waiting, on purpose, in the third grade to exchange invitations
with friends, inviting others to my house, as if it were really mine,
as if I was the one who burned my hand on the stove making soup,
as if I was the one whose skin smelled like bleach and pine oil
from putting one’s soul into the sponge that cleans the toilet
the fruit of your loins has just pissed in.
I felt I needed to explain, to apologize and say it wasn’t my fault
her hands had become hard, that she had begun to age twice
as fast as other women, that she no longer shaved her legs
because it just didn’t matter anymore to my father,
that she now slept alone since husband and child had both
abandoned her to her night sweats and nightmares.
My mother stood framed against the window, against the
flowering dogwoods and redbuds in the backyard, against
the elevated porch that fell into my grandmother’s half-dead
garden, and she looked confused, her face a meshwork
of regrets and unborn happenings, as she closes her eyes
and thinks before setting chicken cutlets on the table,
I should have killed her when I had the chance.