My Mom

I've avoided writing about my mother for many years. We have a... complicated relationship. But it's a good sort of complicated.

I'm attempting a poem about her. Here's my brainstorm. I hope it can springboard into something.

You - so accustomed to your womanhood
Naked and brown - your hands like ice skates
sliding a razor across your slowly expanding legs.
You didn't miss a hair.

My legs - waving with unsightly peach fuzz
that collected dirt
and felt ugly in gym class.

You made it look so damn easy.

Your body smelled always
like jasmine and sweet
I watched you struggle to rise
to lift your burdon of womanhood
from t he bathtub, your breasts rising
glistening and sagging.
You grabbed a towel
you'd neatly folder beside you
and wrapped it around your tired
curves and you sighed
before heading out to your bedroom
to go about the other burdens (find a new word)
that womanhood so lovingly requires.
You made it all look easy, mom, the way you instinctively twisted your hair into a bun, you plucked your perfect eyebrows without flinching, or the way you could slide a tampon inside of yourself, make it disappear with only a thin white reminder. Somewhere inside of me I thought womanhood would be easy - that I would flow through her as effortlessly as you did. I hadned been numbed to the burden (new word) of womanhood. I hadn't been slapped across the face, beaten and abused, My white legs were scratched and scarred for not having your delicate touch with the razor, I squinted my eyes tight in pain as my white skin caught in the razorblade andd peeled away from bone - I tried to tame my eyebrowns, but I thought too much about plucking that I scared myself. I was too small - too dry - to swiftly glide the tampon in like you do - I whinced in pain and was left with half of it sticking outside of me. I sat funny all day.

Mom, you made womanhood look so damn easy. I wasn't prepared to suffer.