Assimilation #2

by Pearl Solski

I make a sex joke about my name
It’s Tova and it means good and
you do good, don’t you
when you’re doing me

My mother and I
Have nothing to talk about
I understand that this is a common experience
I’m not claiming
That there is anything unusual
about our relationship.
Because all daughters disappoint their mothers
My hole is just another hole in the world
Ariana Reines writes in Coeur de Lion
And my mother is just another
Mother in the world
And I am just another
Daughter in the world
And the two of us
Are just each other’s disappointment

I make a sex joke to my mother
Just kidding
We don’t talk enough

When I was younger I would read her sexts
Oh yeah I want to fuck you later
She would write to my father
I guess it surprised me
Because I had never seen them touch
And they slept in different rooms
And whenever she had to hand him something
She gave it to me first
There was something slow
About this exchange
He would ask for the salt
And my mother would ask me
To pass the salt to my father
Even though she was closer
To the salt
And I would say
Why can’t you pass it to him?
between the ages of 5 and 15
or until I stopped noticing

I tell my mother I love her
Not kidding
She calls me before Yom Kippur
To make sure I remember to fast
Except she doesn’t say
Make sure to fast
Instead she sighs
I don’t know if you’re fasting, but….
And then waits too long for me to respond

The walls of this room
Should be made of concrete
But they’re plastered
They’ve been painted dark
And then white
All before I moved here
I found a receipt underneath the carpet
I spend all my time in here like a secret
My clothes have started to pile in the corners
I leave glasses of water by my bed
My mother says my house is ugly
And I rub my shoulders against the wall
My mother says my house is dirty
And I haven’t bothered to clean the bathroom

These sheets are still stained
From the last time I fucked someone
We did good.
You think my mother will ever read this?

I wrote a book when I was sixteen
A thinly concealed story of me
It was called “Trees”
The protagonist hated her mother
When she cried she described it like a storm
There was some confusion
In the language
You couldn’t tell if the storm was outside her
Or moving within her
This wasn’t a literary device

I think my mother mentioned the book to her therapist
Don’t put things online if you don’t want them to be read
I’ve never been good at following her rules

Pearl Solski is a poet & student & staff writer for Rookie Magazine. She sometimes tweets @drosophilala.

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