The Seed That Grew Sideways

She built her crown from glass and kitchen smoke,
Then flinched when I outgrew the weight it broke.
Her voice was velvet soaked in vinegar,
Each praise a hook, each smile a jagged star.

I brushed my lips in warpaint, soft and slow;
She stared like I’d betrayed some ancient vow.
“Unmake yourself - you’re ugly anyway”, she said,
As though my spine had cracked the way she dreamed.

My heels were sirens climbing up the stair,
And she, a dusk that feared the dawn was fair.
She wore her worth like wallpaper, peeled thin,
And blamed my shine for showing where she’d been.

She plucked my joy like thistles from a sheet,
Called gold “too loud,” called dancing “small deceit”.
Yet in her stare - a tremble, barely known,
A child locked deep inside a ribcage throne.

I was the frame she tried to paint away,
A ghost of youth she couldn’t make obey.
The daughter-tree she pruned to fit her past,
Afraid my branches wouldn’t break, but last.

So now I bloom in colors she won’t name,
Too bright to fold, too strange to look the same.
She laces guilt like pearls around my throat,
But still, I hum the song her silence wrote.