Understanding Mother by Amian Bent (India, 20)

​‘Mother’ – the word, to me,
Has always been my other
An entity quite apart from me
Until I saw her
In that childhood picture
Gaze gleaming, smile beaming –
A reflection of what I’d been –
A burning light among her siblings
But to reconcile that image
With the present
I had been looking at the wrong place –
Her eyes, in my eternity, have always been dead –
I just had to look into her words
Splayed across my skin –

Her cursive font
Imprinted upon every inch of me –
To see beyond what I was allowed
That a mother is not just a mother
Nor a wife, nor a sister
She’s a person
Like any other –
Like you and me –
Who gutted her own dreams
And built a home
Out of her soul.

Laden with the weight
Of this uncomfortable realisation
I break out of the china cabinet
But there is no loving embrace
At the end
It is just her and I,
Reading the lies
In each other’s eyes
And misunderstanding
One another as we are wont to do.





Amian Bent is a young writer from India, who's been writing fiction and poetry for five years now. Her writing journey started with the idea of a novel, one that's in the constant process of development. When not writing, she's usually reading books or listening to music. Apart from writing, her other passions include photo editing and nature photography.