Before me, all my girls

there's this world where my mother is a pesky little girl.

wildflowers glistening on her midnight helices,

stygian locks frolicking over her honey coated face

and no one has taught her to care for things yet.

there's this town where my mother is a frisky ickle menace.

a peckish summer on the roof of her tongue, 

where the sun dims before her 24k gleam

and no one has told her how to behave yet.

there's this house where my mother is her mother's child.

she hasn't learnt to soak in the rain,

she hasn't seen the butterflies dead

and not even her mother dared to show her yet.

I meet my mother at her childhood home.

I don't ask to comb her hair, I don't frown at the dirt under her feet —

I lend her honeyed words to help the venom go down that she's yet to accumulate.

I wrap her heart in the coziest blanket before even the first shiver touches her spine.

there's this world where she's not a mother yet

she's the girl I've searched for my entire life 

long before the world chained her fate

and put a curse of womanhood on her limbs….

I meet my mother, her mother, all the mothers before them

to heal.

to dig up the hole I was buried in.

to say “I wish your mother understood you.”

I look for all the girls bound by blood 

and tangled roots of their wombs

I uproot their world, their home

and scream at the top of my lungs, “that's my girl!”