What We’ve Built

Last night, we said the same thing at the same time—again. Our eyes locked, we laughed and carried on. We’ve always had this…synergy. It’s just more often now. 

Sometimes I think she knows me better than I knew myself at her age. Sometimes I think that’s because I know her in a way no one ever knew me.

At eleven, I had the emotional wherewithal to understand nuance. How to enter a room and dissolve. No one asked how I was. Not really.

Only whether I’d studied. Whether I was hungry. Or  if I’d behaved.

There was no language for the wounds I carried, the invisibleness I bled, the shame I felt being trapped in a beautiful body, smart brain be damned.

So, I wrote poems in a locked journal. Slept on a wet pillow each night. Swallowed my resentment along with the daal. 

Longing for a childhood. Hoping for happiness. Relinquishing with grief. I had settled with life. 

She doesn’t have to do that. She doesn’t have to pretend or stifle or die a little every day. 

She sighs audibly. Screams freely. Rolls her eyes.  Names what she feels before it calcifies. Dances up the stairs. Leaves her hair unbraided. Shouts out her desires. Speaks her mind. 

Sometimes, it stings—her honesty. But mostly, it teaches me to listen. 

What I hope she remembers is not the things I do but the way I stay. The quiet of brushing her hair before bedtime.

My off-key hum of “Popular” as I pick her up from school. The way I lay beside her, lights off, holding her stories, her poetry, her songs.

My arms engulfing her in warmth and a love that needs no words. 

And maybe, one day, she’ll remember that I mothered her not from a perfect script, but from a place of belonging.

That we built what I never had … and gifted it to both of us.