My Daughter carmen

Alana Barrios

If I could, I would name her Carmen. With dark brown eyes, and hair that imitated the ocean, Carmen.

She would want so much she would forget to keep swimming and

Slip under the surface of the water---just for a second.

I can see myself lifting her up, drying her face, reminding her I drowned too

She would grow to resent my love, see it as a straitjacket and not the map it is-

--I got lost too.

And when she really does get put in the straitjacket she will blame me for not being able to

swim, rightfully so

“You made me like this, you gave me this” and my eyes will fill with tears because this is not new and

If I swim far enough out, I could relive myself saying this to my own mother.

Me and the women before me have all been in the jacket. And when she’s free

She will learn to love the ocean and its ebb and flow, ignoring my laugh in the waves crashing against her.

Until one day, she has spent so much time hating me and what I naturally did to her, the burdens I placed on her little shoulders, the knots I crafted in her ocean-like hair that she begins to see herself as me but

For now, she belongs to the water, maybe

To me --- one day.