Inheritance

where is it that we connect?
a tube to us in utero
a frayed wire now

we speak as if characters
nodding at the apropos moments
smiling for photographs click click

she made us
yet we are more of a parenthesis in her mistakes
a mark on her scorecard, a box checked smart

I sit in this tower (you too)
A tower she stored me in
so pretty, so smart, so successful
baby girl

But the minerals that formed me
have fossilized into
jaded judgment.
(you too?)

We, as sisters, sit and wonder when Susan Sarandon or Diane Keaton will show up.
When we will laugh and make cookies and drink expensive wine…
When we will be okay with the blemishes on our childhood, adulthood and middle age.

We are stopped by our own:
criticisms turned anger,
trust turned resentment.
ingenuity turned pantomime.
A polyurethane finish,
on an incomplete life's work.

Bottled up and mailed to a place
And hopefully not reviewed, rehashed
this way again.

The experience of one.
You. Two.


Bridgette Holmes is an English teacher at Saratoga Springs High School. She is still experimenting with poetry and hopes to focus more on publication in the coming years. Her poetry has been featured in the online magazine Chanterelle's Notebook. She graduated St. Lawrence University, with a B.A. in English Writing and Plattsburgh State University with a M.S.T. in Curriculum and Instruction. She currently lives in Saratoga Springs , NY.