Every day

I look more like my mother,

or rather as she once looked,

and my daughter looks more like me,

or as I once looked.

I see us in my face

my high cheekbones

my dimpled cheek

my angles and my expressions.

What is it that I need?

I need the care I bestow on them.

I sometimes treat my mother with the bitterness

I feel towards myself.

The softness I feel towards my babies

is a softness I still feel towards an inner me.

Is it aging that I resent?

Do I long to be fresh and soft and sweet?

my edges are becoming sharper

my will more pronounced

my strength increasing

my ability to shout instead of incessantly speaking softly.

My path is a tangled mess only because I stopped paying attention to what I want and need.

It’s easy to get lost in constantly caretaking when my chest is dripping with another human’s only sustenance.

There’s a heaviness to baby wearing

that goes beyond the 19 pounds of cute jellyrolls.

My body remembers the journey we endured together; my shape forever changed by her passage into this world.

I am bound by more than love and blood.

I am bound by transformation.