Legacy

From Passager, Honorable Mention in their Contest Edition • 2023

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I have only known her as Mother, preserved
​like a mannequin with an apron tied over

her flowered afternoon dress, prickly

curlers in her hair, perpetually getting things ready:

ironing shirts and sheets, frying meat on the stove.

But wasn’t she, too, formed somewhere,

shaped by how she was seen, defined by

powerful grown-ups when she was tender?

How it is passed along, kindness

or apathy, warmth or reserve, a legacy

built over time, that you only disassemble brick

by brick later, when it finally becomes clear,

when you are at last standing in that same wind-

whipped place, alone, looking out over rough terrain,

a landscape you chose or didn’t choose,

where you find yourself landed. The view from here

sharper with distance. And you see that small girl

in a house of shadows, her hands perhaps cold,

looking out a window to vast snow-scoured prairie.

You hear all her unspoken longings, the mother

she would one day be slowly taking hold; you feel that

determined green shoot pushing out from dry ground.

Is it any surprise she filled tedious hours with a mop,

pursuing what she was told was virtue, amidst

the startling noise of children? Mother, I want

you to know: you are not alone. You were never alone.