Mirror, Mirror In The Room

That I really did look like my mother,
Should have been a compliment,
One that I should have been proud of,
Because to them, mother was an angel,
She was the one the heavens had sent,
The woman who loved unconditionally,
The one whose heart was known to be of gold,
The woman everyone hoped to be, my mother.

My mother was graceful; she always has been,
A woman who knew where to be and when,
A woman who understood more than she let on,
A woman who gave so much love and bloomed,
Oh, but she was an angel, the prettiest one yet,
My mother was perfection… to society,
Maybe that was why I hated being with her,
Because she was nothing like that with me.

I was a child, one so desperate for affection,
One hoping to be seen and loved endlessly,
By the one who needed to have loved me,
Or at least taught me what love was in life,
But all I got, was an ever-angry mother,
One who was always filled with so much rage,
One who didn’t even see me unless she had to,
A mother who hated my very existence.

So no, she wasn’t an angel to me like you,
She was different; so different, it scared me,
How a person could change so damn fast,
Just because a curtain closed in the midst,
And suddenly I was with her, her child,
But then it never felt like that with my mother,
I was a reminder of a past she hated so much,
An ugly reminder… that wore her young face.

Mirror, mirror in the room, a game so pretty,
Until my mother was the mirror before me,
And all I was to her was an undisclosed portal,
To a past she despised with everything she had,
A reminder of the decisions she had made,
One as bad as being with my father back then,
A decision that cost her everything she cared for,
Only to give her a mirror image of herself.

And no, it wasn’t a compliment for me,
To be the spitting image of my dearest mother,
It was a hell I couldn’t escape with ease,
Unless she lived to be older than possible,
Perhaps that’s why I kept praying to the gods,
To grant her the longest of lifelines with me,
So, I could someday come to look into a mirror,
And not see the woman I hated—love the most.