My Father’s Daughter
Nothing lasts forever so sing me to sleep and dance me round the apple tree.
Careful though, it’s lost it’s leaves and one of it’s branches will scrape along my thinnest skin. I’ll bleed and you will scoop me up in your arms and carry me inside. You will feed me cupcakes and tease away my hurt. I’ll wear the loveliest, palest scar – only my most observant lovers will notice. They will trace their fingers over my eyelids and ask their questions and I will explain what I don’t quite understand.
Argue with me to teach me how to fight. Sting my legs with nettles. Buy me books for Christmas and birthdays. Take me to movies you will sleep through after you’ve eaten all the chocolate while I’m figuring out the plot. I wont be able to keep the books but I’ll save the empty chocolate packets.
Play your music late at night, head bowed low, crying over something I’ll never know. I’ll come to you when I recognise the mournful sound of your clarinet.
Take the dog for a run at the oval, ruffle my hair as you jog past the gate and let me know that I wont end up fractured. She’ll pick your favourite flowers the day after you leave.
Approve of me. Admire me. You’ve been dead too long and I’m needy.
Nothing lasts forever, skin to skin and hand to heart. Mine. Yours. I know because I’m the one that told you to go.
Take me to the beach at night to watch the rats scramble through summer’s leftovers, paint my fingernails pink and remind me to be careful of how I love.
Teach me to sign my name and buy me love hearts to wear in my hair when I can no longer find my own.
Come sit with me for awhile. One more time. Here, where neither of us belong. Love me. I am my father’s daughter and have been all along.
Whisper to me, remind me, that nothing lasts forever, ‘and that my love’s the truth‘.
Photograph by Steffe
i love the voice in this. powerful piece. love the line about love hearts to wear in your hair.
thanks for the radiant comment. i certainly don’t feel it.
lissa
July 2, 2008 at 2:47 am
Beautiful writing! (As always.) Makes me want to reminisce about my Dad, too – the things we did together very different but the feeling between us much the same.
Rosemary Nissen-Wade (aka SnakyPoet)
July 2, 2008 at 7:57 am
wow.
honestly, some of the best writing i’ve seen in the blogosphere. thank you for sharing with us.
the almost right word
July 2, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Lissa, thank you
Rosemary, thank you for your always encouraging words, they are truly appreciated.
The Almost Right Word, huge compliment – thank you, you are much too kind. Really, thank you.
thehappymisfit
July 3, 2008 at 4:05 am
Consider yourself served with an a blog award. Drop by to collect on my Tuesdays post. It’s just a bit of fun.
A bit of recognition for your hard work.
brett365
July 8, 2008 at 9:51 am
You know, this really saddens me. It saddens me because I feel your loss, but I also feel my own. You mourn a father’s love, I mourn the absence of it.
Puss
Glamourpuss
July 8, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Brett, thank you
Made my day.
Oh Puss, I’m so sorry. Either way they fuck you up don’t they…
thehappymisfit
July 9, 2008 at 3:47 am
It was too long ago when I pretended to fall asleep in front of the telly so that Papa would scoop me up in his arms and put me to bed. Much too long ago. Sometimes, in one of the rare dinners I share with my family, I’d look at him across the dining table, and wonder how much of his former love for me is still there.
Karen
July 11, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Karen, I can’t say I know what that must feel like, but I can say that I know the absence hurts. I’m sorry.
thehappymisfit
July 12, 2008 at 4:49 am
Oh misfit…. I’ve only just started reading your words and thoughts…..and I will continue:-) Without reading all there is yet, I am immediately and vehemently compelled to say THANK YOU (yes, that was loud..and yes, it needs to be). Writing is part of my breathing mechanism, it is such an intregal part of my living essence that I am absolutely certain misery, insanity, or death would overtake me if ever I could not write…
…so I read here and realize how mundane and dull I’ve allowed my writing to become (GAWD, I should be SHOT). I can blame it on my pain from a mutilated heart, a bad childhood, a stressful job, busy schedule, GOSH I could really make a million excuses…only for God’s sake, there are none.
Again I yell…………… THANK YOU!!! (Am I presumptuous here? Of course… but somehow I just think you’ll get it:-)
lostintranslation11
July 22, 2008 at 3:06 am