Hazelnut mothers and the perfect coffee mug.

One day or another we become aware that
we have always only been our hazelnut mothers.
There was never a change or a calling--
I didn't wake up girl-bodied and braided--
I was born by the side of a warm coffee
pot with two packets of Splenda waiting on my forehead--
We were black coffee blood brewed in the 
sputter of mornings-- her cracked eggs
dashed into a pan for pancakes or ketchup.
I used to drink dark coffee and now
we drink hazelnut. My mother bakes scones
and I don't sit at the counter anymore--
My mother has never been flaky like a croissant
or sugar-toe dipped like a glazed doughnut--
my mother is firm and hair-down-- she puts her hair
up sometimes with an angler fish jaw clip
when she's working. My hair is too short for
clips. I never have seen
my father drink coffee. My father cut off
my hair with angler fish teeth 
and spiked each strand like the prongs of a fork--
I don't know why I never thought
I would find myself hazelnut and coffee mugged--
We don't agree on creamer but we tear Splenda
packets like croissant curls or either side
of an everything bagel with vegetable
cream cream from the the Uptown espresso bar
where the college students left paintings
of naked women in black and white--
I didn't know we all had bodies like that.
I didn't ever think of myself as naked or 
deserving to be naked-- 
We didn't talk about bodies or how
my face looks like my father's graduation photo
and how I got the hazelnut of my mother's hair
and the hazelnut of my mother's coffee cups. 
How I got my father's depression 
and my fathers guitar string fingers and my father's 
broken television remotes under the sofa. 
We were all looking for the right
size coffee mug to be hazelnuts inside of--
the one with the right space left for cream
or for yellow packets cracked open like eggs
in the morning from the counter I no longer
sit on. There is no perfect coffee mug.
It was only a lie we told each other
while we waited for the pot to warm
us into women-- girl-bodied as I woke up
pulled tight and tuned in the guitar string of
my father-- no I never have been a woman
like the ones in black and white.
I have never been a glazed doughnut or a croissant 
curl to be pulled--  
but I do know I have been everything bagels.
I have been eggs. I have been coffee pot.
Cast iron pan. Angler fish-teeth.
And my mother.