your mother's tragedies.

dried up lakes remind her of her mother

and she doesn't want to be the girl

who wrote a thousand poems

for a boy she never met

eating grapefruit

makes her think of her mother's mouth,

of lipstick left in the tube too long, 

and she doesn't want to spend her life

missing a face she's never seen

her mothers hands smell like bleach,

nails chipped, 

and she doesn't want to wake up one morning,

with her mother's tired face

and yellow eyes,

still in love with ghosts of men

from her mother's past.