Like Her

I caught myself doing it—

my hand rising to my face

the way she does,

the gesture I've seen

a thousand times,

the gesture I swore

I would never do,

the gesture that means

I'm becoming her.

It wasn't the first time.

Last week I heard myself

say a phrase,

use an intonation,

and I stopped mid-sentence

because I recognized

the voice,

and it wasn't mine.

There's a debt we inherit.

Not money.

Not trauma, though there's that too.

But the small things,

the involuntary things,

the way you move your mouth

when you're thinking,

the way you breathe

when you're angry,

the way your hands

know what to do

before your mind catches up.

I looked at my hand

on my face,

at the angle of my wrist,

at the way my fingers

touched my cheekbone,

and I thought,

this is hers,

this is her gesture,

this is what it means

to be made

of someone else,

to carry their movements

in your own body,

to wake up one day

and realize

you're haunted

not by trauma

but by similarity.

By inevitability.

I dropped my hand.

It rose again.

Without thinking.

The gesture stronger

each time I tried

to stop it.