[I realize that this post does not directly answer the question the prompt has, but it is what thinking about the prompt produced. – Owen]

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Daily Prompt: “I’ve Become My Parents” — Do you ever find yourself doing something your parents used to do when you were a kid, despite the fact you hated it back then?

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Like my dad, I’m talkative and lonely;
Like my mom, gregarious, but sad.
My father hid himself inside his music,
My mom would hide in all those books she had

And when my father died, I barely knew him;
My mom is still alive, but far away —
Now like my dad, I have few friends around me,
And like my mom, I lead a quiet day

Our lives, such narrow paths that there’s no leaving,
Held back, led on, by all these hidden threads;
I love my parents well, but now am grieving
This tree that I’ve become, who stands and sheds

The last fall leaves of what all that they taught me.
My life’s a happy one, but short of where
The hopes they had for me have ever found me:
But still, I’m here. A long way from despair.

Like my dad, I’m long in love with beauty;
Like my mom, I love the written word —
I’m like them and unlike them – mostly like them —
Especially when I’m silly and absurd

Like autumn leaves that fall now all around me,
I see their lives within me, spreading out;
As they are mine, I’m theirs, in love and mem’ry —
In who I am
And what
I’m all about