even beaten down and with broken wings I still bleed,
she still bleeds, my soul--
we have been at odds, and though I imagine us
as swordfighters on sunstricken bluffs in the countryside
she has never laid a hand on me,
only whispered half-recalled memories through tears,
of the hyacinths in chicago in april sprouting like fireworks overnight,
and how I had begged nature to turn my veins to roots so I could
feel it,

of late nights watching the high hat lights twinkle in the tiny apartment windows across the street, and how I had cried imagining the intersection of our lives that are each entire worlds on their own, colliding and orbiting like stars,

of fireflies in august in grade school, of hammocking in my yellow converse by the lake to people-watch, of concave train windows and sticky red seats, of my limerence-born tears darkening the tissue-paper-blue bathroom tile at home in connecticut, of wind of music of snow of rain, my God I have been

a prisoner

I have been snuffing out candles for years, sprinting around
cathedrals with blackened fingertips only for the flames to light
again

and I have grown tired of running

even if there is no love for me in this lifetime,
I can no longer stand the sight of her bloodied and curled up
against the walls of my mind,
with covered mouth and hands bound behind her back,
despite everything still seeping poetry

they have the same bird in texas,
the ones that sound like chalk in the driveway in the
late evenings in september,
like reading nancy drew from the public library on wooden porch benches,
like orange light on the counter from the kitchen window,
belgian block curbs and watching airplanes roar over
the sunken sun

instead it is me driving home to no one from work in clothes that look nothing like my father's but still remind me of his car pulling into our driveway in yorktown at 6pm in september,
cutting bell peppers and tomatoes in the kitchen the way my mother used to over the sound of air conditioning and oil popping,
and the smell of dinner when I let the steam from the shower flood the high hats in my tiny kitchen is nothing like it used to be but smells exactly like hers

and the birds that followed me to texas are in the trees outside my window in the late evenings in september,
hailing a different sinking sun and the end of days
that feel much shorter than they used to

in any life i would have still loved you
i am sure
and love itself would be jealous of the way that i love you
with desperate fervor and with fear
only of our own mortality
only of the ephemeral rivers and mountain ranges that could erupt in our way while we are alive
and of the time we may lose
but in every lifetime
when we are taken by whatever will take us away, wherever and whenever we reawaken  
in every lifetime i choose you

she is just like her father
my mother says to our family, her friends, the people she sits next to on the train
it is often an insult to
my stubborn head,
filled with logic gates constantly firing
and cursed with a sharp tongue—
my body,
with more fight boiling in her than all the enemies i’ll make in my life will ever take out of me,
and more soul-fire than she can keep contained within her,
burning, burning, and unafraid
to fill her lungs with the smoke of her passions,
to light aflame years at the end of her life and sculpt the embers and ashes into things she knows will live longer than her body.

i am just like my father
and he like his
and if you knew who they are you would prefer that i be borne of any other bloodline

i am my fathers daughter
i know the power of my integrity,
there is nothing scarier to you than a woman who cannot be bought,
who knows when she is right and will sacrifice everything,
set herself on fire and burn herself into a martyr for the good, the right, the true, things that are bigger than she is,
things some of you have never understood, will never understand, and you will dismiss me, think i am crazy.
even still i know my life has cosmic importance
even still i know that i am a threat to everything you are

i am my fathers daughter
i am my fathers daughter

I want a million pictures of the moment I'm kissing your cheek
to see what I look like in love,
and I want to see their faces flinch
just a little at the red sparks
popping and jumping between us

I want your black curly hair on my pillow cases and
in between my fingers while you're driving up
and down hills, face brightened by the city lights in the distance
that make you quiet and lean over the steering wheel in awe

I want to wake up with you on the pull-out in your parents'
living room, to the rushing sound of the ocean you grew up on,
biking up and down the coast,
your freckled nose and collection of memories just a little smaller

I want to sing you to sleep every night,
but not as badly as I want to watch you play guitar,
fingers remembering, listening,
I know you can tell when it sounds beautiful
and see the scarlet flames licking
up my neck and ears when I hear it too

I want to hear you say "hello, Little One" to toddlers
swinging their arms and grinning at your soft warmth
every day of my life

I want to dance with you, dead tired, half naked in the quiet
early hours of the morning

I've never been afraid of you and I never will be

I love you and no distance will change my mind

I want you and as we grow up together I'll only want you more

my baby girl:
both your mother and you are 22-year-old women
at some cinematic cosmic intersection in nonlinear time

brushing our teeth in public bathrooms,
falling asleep next to fat men in the 37th window seat on planes,
slowly calling home less and less often as we finally
learn to tell the difference between cooked and raw chicken,
wishing we were much younger or much older--
just please, God, not this messy, half-baked, 3am drunken monster in-between

I don't know who your father is,
but I may have an idea -- my boy is no
Hallmark movie star but he stayed with me
in my college one-bedroom for two weeks to
give me medicine and baths when I
couldn't breathe without pain,
he always calls and he always comes back, which is
much more than I can say for most men.
and I know that he'd do the same for you,
which is why I wouldn't be surprised if we married

anything borne of my being will certainly have
a sailor's mouth and a fire in her belly,
and I won't apologize for that, but I will apologize for the
men you scare away with the boy-cut, shoulder muscles, and 6-inch blade in your pant-pocket--
even with tails between their legs they make me crazy,
crazy because they tell me
the womb that will bear you makes me weak,
makes me a doll, a pretty little thing,
and I let them
convince me that you, the existence of you, is my failure to neuter myself numb,
to be great,
my white flag, my conviction and the disintegration of my
mask of competence

if you are reading this,
my daughter,
you must instead be my greatest victory,
proof of my strength and my sacrifice, my selflessness,
proof that the men in this world have no knowledge of us,
and every person that I have been in my life
is now for you, is part of you, and has loved you.
I love you with bearing grease underneath my fingernails,
mud in my mouth, and a 6-inch blade on my hip,
I love you with daisy chains on my wrists singing showtunes
at a bonfire by the lake.
I love you in heartbreak and in pain,
I love you in fury, and in comfort,
I love you in the safe embrace of the man who may later be your father
and I love you with the love my mother has for me

we will both be gone at some other intersection in time
but the love I have for you transcends our mortality,
and is already etched into something beautiful and beyond