Two weeks after her death,

Facebook asked me if I'd like to be friends

with my mother—

or rather, someone with her name.

I wonder who has broken

into my account, and conjured up

those two words, which were supposed to mean

Mother—but she never really was my mother—

rather, I was hers:

lying beside her at night, saying

she's beautiful, brilliant, doesn't need

her husband, her lovers—

I never would have believed

she'd try to kill me, after she flaunted

me to everyone she knew. This is my daughter,

she'd say, the one that is saving me.

She couldn't imagine I'd grow up

without her, let her become smaller and smaller.

After chemotherapy she kept looking at herself

in the mirror, screaming—

before she died, she held up grade-school photos

of me and showed them to everyone she knew

saying: This was my daughter,

the one that is killing me—