Goodbye

Tina Edgley is a self-taught artist from Florida's Heartland. She has loved creating art for as long as she can remember but has recently taken a special interest in painting. Her work is meant to spotlight mental health through the lens of personal experience. IEdgley takes inspiration from niche online art movements such as the liminal space movement and Weirdcore.

Inheritance

by Filiz Fish

My mom likes to say she gave me her tongue—
not the muscle
but the ability to move worlds with it.
She anointed me with her fury,
her impatience,
the power to gaze within your opponent
and pluck their greatest insecurity
from their chest.
She birthed me in her image,
a reflection she must avoid
lest she take the blame for my fire.
Something to claim if I use my power for good,
singing “That’s my daughter!”
to her friends when I win tournaments
in debate because all I seem to do is
refute, refute, refute.
But when I cut her with words
woven from her womb,
I am her greatest error.

My mom gifted me her tongue—
no, not as a gift,
but as an attempt to cleanse
herself, to pass illness
from host to donor, parent to child.
It didn’t work,
and I am the proof—
the fights we detonate with our words,
two soldiers dueling for the last breath.
I’ll come to her room after we argue,
the poison still on my lips. 
We say “sorry,” “forgive me,” 
but there’s no peace
between women like us.

When they ask which parent I mirror,
I claim my father’s face.
But in my disposition, I am my mother’s daughter,
the venom she could never purge,
the anger she never could swallow,
the echo of all her pain.
Everything she tries to bury,
I resurrect. Everything she despises,
I become. I am my mother’s daughter,
all her rage, all her upset,
and it hurts like hell.

Author's Bio:

Filiz Fish is a rising junior from Los Angeles, California. She enjoys writing poetry, listening to Frank Ocean, and spending time with her cat, Tarçin. Filiz currently serves as an editor for her school’s literary magazine,The Polygraph.