Precious Ejim

Inherited Hate

i hated women
the soft skin hiding a serrated edge.
i despised the mirror for its betrayal,
the weight rising on my chest,
becoming the very thing i despised–
kin to the enemy.

my mother was a woman,
which is to say she was a storm.
sharp-tongued. Iron-fisted.
who couldn’t stand lullabies–

her hands spoke a language of impact,
before her mouth could ever find the words.
she stole my girlhood to pay for her own debts,
leaving me the silence of a house with a stranger.

venom dripping from a painted lip,
envy, a blade sharpened on the whetstone
of a kitchen counter.

i saw it turn my sister–once with easy laughter,
now, a mouth filled with salt.

i watched my mother reach into her throat,
and replace her song with teeth.
as she grew breasts, she grew a grudge.

i hated her.

until the day i looked at my mother's hands–
the roughness of her palms, i can trace the lines.
the more i sifted through the wreckage of her life.
the more my rage turned to heavy, bitter grief.

here i was, a young woman, staring at
the callused hands of a woman who had to claw
a life out of a world that sought to bury her.

she was not cruel by nature,
but exhausted by design.
violence was not the sin
it was the only dialect she was taught,
language passed from mother to daughter.

I am learning to be a woman.

 

Precious Ejim is a writer from Boston, Massachusetts. She writes confessional poetry that explores womanhood, longing, and emotional vulnerability in contemporary life. Her work is interested in intimacy, interiority, and the emotional textures of being young and female. Her influences include Audre Lorde and Sylvia Plath, and Sharon Olds, whose work has shaped the way she thinks about voice, honesty, and emotional precision.