The Thing I Got From Her

I saw my mother's face in the mirror this morning,

the line between my brows—my mother's face.

Same crease she gets when she's thinking,

about money, time, the reckoning.

The worry lives there, carved in deep,

a map of everything she couldn't keep.

It wasn't there a year ago.

But now it's here, and I just know

it came from her, inherited like debt,

like something I was always meant to get.

I tried to smooth it with my finger.

The crease came back. It wants to linger.

I'm becoming her in pieces.

First the line, then the way her face stiffens

when someone asks too much of her,

the habit of apologizing for things

that aren't mine to apologize for,

the angle of her wrists when she folds her hands.

I called her after. She didn't say anything

about my face. I didn't ask about hers.

But we both know:

this is what we inherit.

This is what women become

when they spend their lives

thinking about problems they can't solve,

holding worries that aren't theirs to hold.

The line will get deeper. It has to.

And one day my daughter will look

in a mirror and see me looking back,

and she'll understand what we've been

passing down all along:

this crease, this weight, this particular way

of standing still and being afraid.