i am my own mother

on emotional parentification and self-parenting, rootlessness, and how the host of a parasite always dies twice.

When I was fourteen, I used to kneel before an older woman. Not in that way of submission, but the way even an adult child still rested their chin in their mother’s lap when bowed at her foot. Our dynamic was simple: I called, she answered. I’d blather on about whatever was bothering me and she would grab my hands mid-sentence with familiar urgency—her …