What Not to Be

I was only five when I first heard
the words strung together.

They came from a mother who was
supposed to teach me how to live,
how to be kind, how to love.

But she didn’t.
“Why can’t you be like Betty Anne?”

My young skin felt the burning of her
hand on my face
and the hate in her eyes.

My young heart felt the difference
between Betty Anne and me.

I was an only child, but that fact
didn’t make me special,
didn’t buy me love.

The cadence rings in my eighty-one-year-old ears.

But I learned—
and I did not become her.