My mom sends me a text almost every Sunday.
It reads “I love you daughter of mine.”
I respond with “I love you too mother of mine.”
It’s the 3rd year of this weekly text exchange,
I love her more now than I did in the beginning,
10 hours of distance has smoothed her edges and mine.

But this ritualistic exchange is hard.
I don't love the word daughter.
The word daughter makes my skin crawl.
It implies girlhood,
promises womanhood,
gives a chance of motherhood.

The word daughter means my mom is seeing something in me that isn’t there.
She’s seeing what she wrote on my birth certificate,
what she forced others to see when she wouldn’t let me cut my hair short,
allusions of an ill-fitting label.

I am not her daughter,
I am not another son either.
I am not even a child anymore,
though I am still hers

Her flesh and blood and tears and words are part of who I am,
I don’t know how to explain the rest of me.
I don't want to make her feel like she lost a daughter,
But I don't want to continue letting her think that she ever had one.