Angles of Incidence

Three women emerge from the gray sedan as one. 

A middle-aged mother caught between generations 
drives her aging mother to run Saturday morning errands. 
Exhausted from demands at work and at home, 
she feels the weight of responsibility that others dodge or ignore. 
She owes both generations, one for raising her and the other she produced. 
She opens the car door and pauses, left foot on the ground, 
before bringing her tired body to standing. 
She looks toward their reflections in the small panes of glass 
on the new garage door – the one she convinced her siblings they all buy – and 
thinks of the chores she will put off 
in favor of keeping her mother company and 
teaching her daughter to drive a stick on a Saturday afternoon.

A mostly gray mother of nine stairstep children 
left home as a poor teen to marry a poor young man. 
He suggested they join the Great Migration. 
She followed him and tradition along the Hillbilly Highway
and stayed busy cooking and cleaning, birthing babies 
and crunching the numbers of his weekly paychecks 
to make food last in the home they built. 
She shifts her weight toward the car door, 
shoves it open, and pauses, right foot on the ground, 
gripping the frame for stability as she lifts her creaky bones to stand. 
She looks toward their reflections in the small panes of glass 
on the new garage door – the one her children insisted they pay for – and 
considers how much easier life will be for her seventeen grandchildren.

A polite teen is grudgingly happy 
to spend time with the generations who came before her. 
She vaguely knows time is limited and wants to soak it in. 
Decades will pass before she holds her breath 
while teaching her daughter to drive and even more 
before she is the aging passenger who needs help carrying bags. 
For now she just opens the car door, 
barely pausing with her right foot on the ground 
before springing from the vehicle. The air shifts. 
She looks toward their reflections in the small panes of glass 
on the new garage door – the one they still call new even though 
it was installed two years ago – and sucks in a trembling breath.

One woman stares back
from the small panes of glass 
on the new garage door. 
The apples of her cheeks
the laugh lines 
the stature
the broad shoulders 
the brown skin 
the bobbed hair
separate yet indistinguishable
singular but interchangeable 
a supernatural juxtaposition 
that reflects kinship and connection.