Forgive me,
I ask, as I knock at your door.
For our differences.
For the cruel things that I've said to you.

Forgive me,
For being your daughter.
For not being that well enough.

Forgive me for chasing my happy,
My premonition of leaving you
To your own devices.
To find myself, new, in the fall.
That ghost of a spirit who swears that she loves you,
But only comes home at Thanksgiving.

Forgive her.

Forgive her for lying to you,
For saving her skin because she thought that you would be proud.
She is sorry
That every day she made you spend hours alone,
Languishing in your own spiral,
And then, coming home, went downstairs;
Not to talk to you of her life,
Or of all that she wanted to do
With those eighteen years that you gave her.
In eighteen more years,
You'll have given her thirty-six,
It will tighten her to you,
Draw it in desperate colors.

Because that was the age when you picked her out
Of the shopfront inside of your mind, said
Lord, give me this one,
Give me a daughter to love.
And wrapped her up in one pretty bow,
Of one dark, slightly raised freckle,
That lies on the back of my hand
And forgives you.
For all of those failings you told me,
Once, that you had.

Forgive me,
For thinking about myself,
More than I thought about you.

Forgive me for being a young person,
Lost in my love, in my pain;
In the shows I watched on television,
And the music that I listened to.
Instead of my schoolwork and daring to dream.
To live up to the girl that you saw in your prophecy visions,
When I was but five minutes old.

Forgive me,
For saying bad words and sneaking away,
Without telling you where I had gone.
Don't you see that I'm telling you now?

Forgive me, I say, and I'm here at your doorstep.
How is it that you look the same to me now,
As when I was only seven,
And didn't know how long you'd lived,
In a country with separate words?

Forgive me, I say, and you stop me there.
What is there, you ask, to forgive?