6/12/25

i’ve been dreaming about mom a lot recently.

in the scene (it’s the same every time) we’re princesses, sipping nothing out of toy teacups and laughing at nothing particular. we wear plastic crowns. her smile is gentle. everything about her is gentle.

i say something funny, and she lets out a beautiful, wonderful sound. it’s hard to explain as anything other than the auditory equivalent of light shining through stained glass. fleeting, colored, holy.

a laugh. a beautiful, imagined laugh, coming from the lips of really the only woman who truly matters.

i wake up every morning in excruciating silence.

it’s been a long time since i felt my mom liked me. her “i love you too”s morphed into “mmhm”s long ago. what about me had changed so much that i couldn’t still be loved like i once had been, i wonder? i know it’s not my breasts, nor my legs, nor my menstrual cycle—no, those are things that fathers fear, not mothers.

i wish i knew what monster she sees when she looks at me. do i breathe fire out of the nose she gave me? is my tongue red and mangled, my teeth sharp and jagged? or maybe it’s the traitors that run unrestrained through my veins that scare her—the insurgents coded into my cells, their voices raised and flags high, celebrating the twenty-second year of their occupation while draped shamelessly, unabashedly in the colors of a man she had long wished to forget.

i’ve been making a conscious effort to not have these dreams anymore, yet i still welcome them when they return to me. when i wake up, the weight of sleep presses against my cheek, leaving imprints that seem to spell out: i miss you, i miss you, i miss you.

ellie