The Women in the Family

By Trista Dominiqu

for my aunts

Slowly but surely I am
turning into the women
of my family.

When did it start?
Was it back in my teen years
when my voice was mistaken
for my mothers, when answering
the phone.

Or perhaps it was when I was a
child discovering my day wasn’t
complete if I hadn’t read from a
book?

Did I transition when I took on the
role of little mother, cooking and
caring for my sisters at the age of
fourteen?

When I married,
When I gave birth,
When I dug my hands in
the earth learning that
my thumb was also green?

But maybe, just maybe its
not that I’m beginning to
turn into these women, but
that I have been one of them
all along.

First published in The Beauty of Muttliness