Books & Literature

Daughter of Her Ache

I was shaped by my mother’s quiet ache, raised in the hush between her wounds and her wishes. These poems trace how a daughter learns to hold that inherited trembling—and finally, to let it go.

Muskan Bhatia

15 Nov 2025 — 3 min read

Muskan with her mother in Indore, India (2000)

Muskan Bhatia slips into the quiet, pulsing space where mother-love and inherited ache intertwine. These poems move like a soft spell, unravelling the tender burdens passed from one generation of women to the next, and the bravery it takes to loosen their hold.

With language as gentle as it is unflinching, the work traces a girl shaped by her mother’s trembling, a woman learning to release it, and the healing that rises when forgiveness becomes a kind of dawn.

She Named Me Happiness

Amma had a heartache—
she named it me.

Funny, I’d say,
she called me Happiness,
the smile of the house.

I learned early
that joy is a duty,
that silence wears lipstick
and laughs on command.

Amma would watch me dance—
eyes full of something
between ache and pride.

I never asked
what hurt she hid
beneath my borrowed name.

Still,
when I smile too hard,
I think I see her
smiling through me—
the heartache
that learned to live.

Part I — “Weak Child”

Muskan with her mother in Indore, India (2000)

Mother, please, mother,
listen to me.
I am your weak child,
not the wild one—
perhaps the weakest,
the one who cups your trembling
tight in her small palm.

I learned your silence
before I learned my name—
how to fold myself
into something smaller,
how to smile
when your voice broke
against the kitchen wall.

You gave me your trembling,
your half-finished prayers,
your hunger disguised as care.
I wear them still—
soft ghosts around my wrists,
like bangles that never ring.

I am not your shame,
though you shaped me
from it.
I am the echo you left
inside your own chest,
the gentlest part
you could not forgive.

Part II — “Release”

But mother,
I forgive you—
for the nights you hid your fear
inside your breath,
for the way your love
came wrapped in warning.

I know now—
you too were once
someone’s weak child,
cradling another woman’s sorrow
like a seed you dared not drop.

So I open my hand,
let your insecurity go,
watch it scatter in the wind.
It’s light now—
lighter than I imagined.

And as it drifts,
so do I—
not away from you,
but beyond the ache,
into something wide and wordless,
where love does not tremble—
it breathes,
steady as dawn.