I am a spitting image of my mother
every step I take mirrors hers
Where her left hand moves, my right hand follows
each sound she makes,
my throat swallows,
Her words pierce through me
Like sharpened shards of glass
I swallow
Her words suffocate me.
When I look into her eyes, I see so much LOVE
When she looks into mine she sees, imperfections
She raised me to be independent
yet, so dependent on her
As if I was her extra appendage
She needed me, like I needed her
She needed me to be the best Dominican housewife
“Limpia las losas,” She’d say
“Men don’t like, Men dont like dirty, Men DONT LIKE DIRTY WOMEN.”
I needed her to be my mother
and love me like her daughter
but her love,
her love was to teach me from age 9
to clean the 4 Bedroom,1.5 bath, living room, and kitchen
Every single Sunday, on my own like good girls do
Her love, was for me to skip days of school
so I can babysit my two younger siblings
Her love, was to curse at me if I dared
Bring home anything less than at B+
‘Cause bringing home 4 educational awards
was not better than bringing home 8
I still wanted to make her proud
‘Cause I was proud she raised 4 children practically on her own
For all my father did was
Spew out 4 perfectly good sperm
From his phantom limb dick
And then it clicked
My mother was raising me to be a housewife
To serve men
So that one day I can find a husband
Better than my father was
I wanted to make her proud
I would make her proud
Until one day she called me up at work
Said she had a question
My heart sunk, my silence said it all
My mind went blank
“Are you gay?,” she said
My mind went blank
She said, “Mi hija por favor avanzate, answer the question.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” I said shamefully
And my only question to her was
“Are you still going to be proud of me?”
My mind went blank
All I could hear was her faint echo
When she threw me out
like I was the baggage she held onto for years
All I could hear, were her last words
I held onto for years
She said “Sucia, maricon, dirty little whore,
How can you like women? It is a disgrace to God
and a disgrace for me to call you my daughter.”
All I could hear was her stern voice on repeat.
She said, “I’d rather you be a prostitute
because at least I know you’d be having sex with men, with men, with men.”
All I can hear now is her blood
Rushing through my veins
It pains me every time I look at my reflection
I seek perfection
When I look at my reflection
I see her eyes
I see my nose
I see our lips, whispering “I just want to make you proud.”
About Nati:
Nati Reyes is a lifelong New Yorker, Afro-Latina, poet and avid traveler. For the past seven years she has worked with nonprofit organizations assisting people who have developmental and intellectual disabilities.
She is a first generation Dominican -Haitian American and the first to graduate University in her immediate family. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the State University of New York at Purchase College in 2011. She has performed weekly at multiple open mics across NYC and Brooklyn. In 2013, she was a featured poet at the Bluestockings Cafe and Bookstore in New York City. She is passionate art, music and spiritualty. Her poetry highlights her struggles as an Afro Latina woman discovering herself in the world and the inequalities she encounters.
Since 2015, she has been living and working in South Korea, hoping for her voice to be hear across oceans.
