Mommy

Reflective surfaces reveal two halves.

Apple cut, seeds spill, fall by your feet.

I swallow using the serpentine tongue you gave me.

A tree grows out my mouth

And blooms.

I have grown in the image of you.

When winter came, I kept sprouting.

Let my flowers freeze, frost-kissed leaves

Turned hard and shattered.

When summer broke through

My body was swollen.

I am not evergreen.

There is no shame in hiding

From blizzards. I may kiss the small fists of rain

As they fall but that does not mean

I receive flooding with the same open mouth.

You are the storm that keeps me alive

And the vines that smother me.

The rings of my body are

Your handprints, and my veins

Share the same water.

I may never see the sun as closely as you do.

But every hurricane I taste I spit out.

I will not feel guilty when I uproot

You from my soil. I will not feel

guilty when I trim back your leaves from my sky.

I will no longer be filtered by you.