nothing else but my heart's desire [COLLECTION] | FINISHED

Eldest daughter of an eldest daughter - ORIGINAL PROSE

I'm the eldest daughter of an eldest daughter of a woman who loved her granddaughter more. I'm a mother with no children, a woman among women, a woman stranded and outcast, a woman among her peers, standing in a room with other women as she looks into herself to see another room, another person unlike herself, yet so familiar, standing with and apart from other women - always an other, sometimes the same. Red are the walls, with the windows both small, narrow, large, wide, until I see they are not windows to climb through but mirrors to peer through. Another me exists within the frame, and she is a mother, I smash the mirror as shards break off upon impact. Another me exists before me, as more mirrors appear, some old, some young, until I realise all the women around me are versions of me, all which exist somewhere, outside there, existing as I do, yet all looking inwardly to the same red walls and broken mirrors. I'm the eldest daughter of an eldest daughter of a woman who loved her granddaughter more. My grandmother is dead, long before her time yet leaving behind a life well-lived, and I dont know if I feel relief, anger, indifference or all three. I lie here still and the past is me, living in my head and in my body as I walk, talk, think, breathe. I wish to shut it off, to throw such memories to the side, but my patience has worn thin and I no longer shudder in fear or recoil at the thought, but merely stare with the blankness of a woman centuries old, as she had lived and died over and over, as the world turns and the same crude remarks are made, followed by disdain for her kind as a woman who wore her years on her face and in her body, just as I do. And so I see her as she passes through me, as her memories become my own and I am met with the same looks of reluctant tolerance of that which does not conform, which refuses to yield, as I see not a reflection of her but of myself, as a force as strong as mountains, unable to be moved by wind nor storm. I am just a woman, but I cannot wait to live a year longer, to stand as she had, not with my back to the wall and smiling only when I wish to.

I'm the eldest daughter of an eldest daughter of a woman who loved her granddaughter more. She loved me more, and still I weep, because it'd never be enough and was all I needed to exist, to be seen, to simply be.