5. I Look in the Mirror and See My Mother's Face
INTRO
I see a choice: keep cracking or calcify.
I choose the crack. I choose the cry.
I don't betray the ones before —
I just won't practice the same old war.
CHORUS
I look in the mirror and see my mother's face.
She said: "Don't look too long — you'll hate what you see."
The glass stopped being a friend that day.
I look in the mirror and see my mother's face.
(see my mothers face.)
VERSE 1
She covered her mouth every time she smiled.
The tic in her face was a stutter she couldn't hide.
She dreaded her own reflection. I watched her.
I started dreading me.
Her mother died when she was two.
She doesn't remember the holding — just the hole.
So she learned to hold nothing. Not herself. Not me.
She said "you're too sensitive."
Sensitivity was the first thing stolen from her.
That's the face I see in the mirror sometimes.
The woman who lost herself in the family.
She was a model. Watched her looks go.
Daddy didn't like makeup. So she put herself away.
Packed her opinions in a box. Buried her wants in the backyard.
PRE-CHORUS
Her shame had a face.
Now that face is mine.
CHORUS
I look in the mirror and see my mother's face.
She said: "Don't look too long — you'll hate what you see."
The glass stopped being a friend that day.
I look in the mirror and see my mother's face.
(see my mothers face.)
VERSE 2
She said, "I think I just feel left out of life.
It would be nice to have a day where nothing was wrong."
Now I stand in front of the glass, and I don't know whose voice is whose.
The mirror told me I'm nothing. I believed it.
Every reflection was her voice in disguise.
I'd look for myself and see her eyes.
I picked at my skin 'til it learned to scar.
Every pore a war.
I dug for the girl I lost inside me.
The blood was the only warmth I could feel.
PRE-CHORUS
Her shame had a face.
Now that face is mine.
CHORUS
I look in the mirror and see my mother's face.
She said: "Don't look too long — you'll hate what you see."
The glass stopped being a friend that day.
I look in the mirror and see my mother's face.
(see my mothers face.)
BRIDGE
I don't wanna live like her —
counting losses in the mirror, touching her face like it already disappeared.
She passed down her shame like a family recipe.
I'm still trying to cook it out of me.
I hear her voice when I apologize too fast.
That's not mine. That's her past.
I became a window.
How do you learn to be solid when you were see-through?
TINY CHORUS
I look in the mirror and see my mother's face.
(see my mothers face.)
OUTRO
I'm still unlearning how to look at my own face without seeing hers.
I'm not free of her.
I'm just learning to look at me.
