Inheritance is Accidental

The man interrupts my mother and my father agrees

The man belittles her and my father looks over and signals my mother silent

My father sees nothing wrong or maybe he does and this is how it has always been

In any other space my mother is loud

Unrelenting, even

But here, I can almost hear the words dying in my mothers mouth

I watch as my father’s indifference steals from her

I think if this is how she is with all men

Quiet, I watch a wildflower wilt

And I wonder if this is my heritage

For my mouth to be hollow, silent

While my head is swarming with words

Screaming aloud to no one

My brother says everything

I was not taught that privilege

I was trained to filter and consider

My mother says, “you can’t talk like that”

“Walk like that”

“Relax your shoulders and exist like that”

“That is not how you become someone's wife”

And I forgive her now

She only passed down to me what I assume she received from her mother

And it is then I realize my inheritance is a shrinking existence

A quiet mouth

I never wanted to be my mother, you know?

But you spend enough time judging and you become all you’ve seen

Learning to make excuses for everyone but yourself

Learning to accept every apology whether or not you actually get one

To hold everything in so much you start bursting at the seams at every slight inconvenience

The women in my family have been disappearing for years

Some have completely vanished

We all learn in from our mothers

Stealing visibility whenever we can find it

And whenever I ask her why

She says, “I’m from a different generation”

And I think she means “sorry”

I think she means “I am only what my mother was”