Every time you tell your daughter you yell at her out of love, you teach her to confuse anger with kindness. Which seems like a good idea til she grows up to trust men who hurt her cause they look so much like you.
You have sadness living in places sadness shouldn’t live.
You pinned my legs to the ground with your feet and demanded i stand up.
Trying to convince myself i am allowed to take up space is like writing with my left hand when i was born to use my right.
A daughter should not have to beg her father for a relationship.
You tell me to quiet down cause my opinions make me less beautiful but i was not made with a fire in my belly so i could be put out. I was not made with a lightness on my tongue so i could be easy to swallow. I was made heavy, half blade and half silk. Difficult to forget and not easy for the mind to follow.
Your mother is in the habit of offering more love than you can carry. Your father is absent. You are a war, the border between two countries. The collateral damage. The paradox that joins the two but also splits them apart.
I can’t tell if my mother is terrified or in love with my father. It all looks the same.
I struggle so deeply to understand how someone can pour their entire soul, blood, and energy into something without wanting anything in return.
Emptying out of my mother’s belly was my first act of disappearance. Learning to shrink for a family who likes their daughters invisible was the second. The art of being empty is simple. Believe them when they say you are nothing. Repeat it to yourself like a wish, I am nothing. I am nothing. I am nothing, so often the only reason you know you’re alive is from the heaving of your chest.
You look just like your mother... I guess i do carry her tenderness well. You both have the same eyes... cause we both are exhausted. And the hands... we share the same wilting fingers. But that rage, your mother doesn’t wear that anger... You’re right, this rage is the one thing I get from my father.
When my mother opens her mouth to have a conversation at dinner my father shoves the word hush between her lips and tells her to never speak with her mouth full. This is how the women in my family learned to live with their mouths closed.
Father. You always call to say nothing in particular. You ask what i’m doing or where I am and when the silence stretches like a lifetime between us I scramble to find questions to keep the conversation going. What i long to say most is... I understand this world broke you. It has been so hard on your feet. I don’t blame you for not knowing how to remain soft with me. Sometimes i stay up thinking of all the places you are hurting which you’ll never care to mention. I come from the same aching blood. From the same bone so desperate for attention I collapse in on myself. I am your daughter. I know the small talk is the only way you know how to tell me you love me. Cause it is the only way i know how to tell you.
You have sadness living in places sadness shouldn’t live.
You pinned my legs to the ground with your feet and demanded i stand up.
Trying to convince myself i am allowed to take up space is like writing with my left hand when i was born to use my right.
A daughter should not have to beg her father for a relationship.
You tell me to quiet down cause my opinions make me less beautiful but i was not made with a fire in my belly so i could be put out. I was not made with a lightness on my tongue so i could be easy to swallow. I was made heavy, half blade and half silk. Difficult to forget and not easy for the mind to follow.
Your mother is in the habit of offering more love than you can carry. Your father is absent. You are a war, the border between two countries. The collateral damage. The paradox that joins the two but also splits them apart.
I can’t tell if my mother is terrified or in love with my father. It all looks the same.
I struggle so deeply to understand how someone can pour their entire soul, blood, and energy into something without wanting anything in return.
Emptying out of my mother’s belly was my first act of disappearance. Learning to shrink for a family who likes their daughters invisible was the second. The art of being empty is simple. Believe them when they say you are nothing. Repeat it to yourself like a wish, I am nothing. I am nothing. I am nothing, so often the only reason you know you’re alive is from the heaving of your chest.
You look just like your mother... I guess i do carry her tenderness well. You both have the same eyes... cause we both are exhausted. And the hands... we share the same wilting fingers. But that rage, your mother doesn’t wear that anger... You’re right, this rage is the one thing I get from my father.
When my mother opens her mouth to have a conversation at dinner my father shoves the word hush between her lips and tells her to never speak with her mouth full. This is how the women in my family learned to live with their mouths closed.
Father. You always call to say nothing in particular. You ask what i’m doing or where I am and when the silence stretches like a lifetime between us I scramble to find questions to keep the conversation going. What i long to say most is... I understand this world broke you. It has been so hard on your feet. I don’t blame you for not knowing how to remain soft with me. Sometimes i stay up thinking of all the places you are hurting which you’ll never care to mention. I come from the same aching blood. From the same bone so desperate for attention I collapse in on myself. I am your daughter. I know the small talk is the only way you know how to tell me you love me. Cause it is the only way i know how to tell you.