forty nine
Tomorrow is my mothers birthday. She would have been forty nine.
I remember her at forty two, that strange August when she realized she had outlived her own mother. It was a victory she could not celebrate. Just a breath she held for a year, unsure what to do with it.
Now I am left counting. Will I live to see the birthday that tips me past her years? Will my own children, if I dare to have them, watch me fade the way I watched her?
The women in my family are candles that collapse inward, spilling before the song is finished. We do not die quietly, we flicker, then vanish mid sentence, leaving the air smelling faintly of smoke.
I imagine my future as a hallway of unopened doors, each one marked with an age. Forty one. Forty two. Forty three... and somewhere, the door with my name on it. Already shut, already waiting.
Will I be the one to break the curse, or just another year added to a lineage of unfinished lives? I wonder if death keeps a ledger of our names and ages, ticking them off like birthdays.
Sometimes I feel her shadow at my shoulder, measuring me the way I measure myself now. The clock on the wall keeps time for us both.
And I think if I make it past her, will I be living my own life or only borrowing from hers?
