Her Daughter by Kateryna Kishchynska

She didn’t expect to see her daughter there.

She didn’t expect to see her daughter happy. 

What looked like happy, content. Smiling and gesturing enthusiastically, enjoying herself. She looked at her daughter from afar, took in the healthiness of her hair, the ease in every movement. The absence of alertness in her posture. When they lived together she watched her daughter grow and become more anxious and hard as if she was getting ready for a disaster to happen at any moment. And there were disasters, moments she was not proud of. When she was too harsh of a mother, when she screamed, when she stole her money from a part-time job, when she cut off her grandparents, when she hit her. And that last time when she became such a disaster, such an all-consuming destructive cataclysm her daughter took all her love and left, never to come back again. 

The shame sat with her in her room every day. The memories of her monstrosity haunted mirrors and photos. She learned to exist with her guilt dragging behind her like a tail and she thought how her daughter was learning somewhere to exist with her trauma. But there she stood, a flourishing young woman. No visible scars on her. She realised she didn’t expect her to be doing so well. She was guilty for hurting her but even more guilty for wishing that she had destroyed her. She couldn’t stand to be a thing her daughter could move on from. So she called to her by her name.