INTRO

I knelt at my mother’s feet. Watched her pull a pomegranate part with her hands, the red juice rolling down her arms.

“My little girl. Your mother is starving.” Her gentle voice left my lungs burning.

She gazed longingly at me, held out the fruit to my lips. “Should I eat you?”

My mother’s hunger grew each day toward my birth. She eats the seeds from the pomegranate, and I do the same with my gaze on her.

The juice is sweet with a metallic taste. I spit it out when it rots on my tongue—flesh and teeth and bones.

“Do you not like the taste of me?” She asked with her lips stained red.

“I do,” I said with pieces of her stuck between my teeth.

I died my first death when my mother scraped me from her womb, and she threw me into the frozen, unwelcome river of being her beloved.

She set the pomegranate she held in her hand on the table before she drew between her legs, a wet sticky hand on my cheek, the other caressing the back of my neck. My body went limp against her, eyes closed. The charred smell of love clings to her clothes and skin.

And then she kissed my forehead. Baptizing me. Saving me—from me.

I am a version of my mother, she hated, like she is a version of her mother who hated her. Now, cling desperately to my mother. I bury my face in her breast. A cry ripped open my chest.

I tore away parts of my mother from myself, hid them in dirty panties stained with blood and the intoxicating scent of misery and greed.

I birthed her. She is me. I loved her. That was the damage.