I sat down by my father's grave (who is not dead yet),
and my mother's (who died 3 years ago),
and my aunt (who died two years ago-- alone),
and my great-grandparents (who died before I knew them).
I sat down with dry eyes by these graves all in a row
and contemplated the cold, impermanence of life.

My father maintains the graves.
He festoons them with colorful flowers for Memorial Day.
I think, how cliche to ornament with
silk flowers in a fake urn
on a lonesome line of graves.
But, moving the wire-cored foliage I see a singular
peacock feather hidden among the sanguine flowers
and realize this is the essence of my father
and that understanding
dampens my cheeks.

O, it is definite.
I submit to your summit,
And linger there indefinitely.

Like my father did,
O, so perfectly lulled;
took the pill

His mother nursed him with,
To forget his father, he who
Met his grace

Earlier than the stripling of your years.
O, how he reset your communion,
Traced your strength asunder-

Compacted you into diamonds;
Your violence mined them with duds.
Recall me now, you recalled me then-

Never now, do you see me,
Without yourself as him.
Him for his failings.

I am your mirror to you,
The roses you gave me
Have been rotting since 1962.

O father, I just wanted you to be true
But you took your dead father,
And gave me him too.

Dear Dad,

I relive your death every day.

Your sincerely,
Miss Daughter.

In the kitchen of fate, where recipes align,
There's a daughter of misfortune, a tale so intertwined.
Her father, luck's favored, with fortune at his side,
But she's taken her mother's grace as her guide.

Her mother, a tempest in life's stormy sea,
Taught her strength in adversity, resilience to be.
Though luck eluded her, in her eyes, you'd find,
A sparkle of hope, a spirit unconfined.

In the cauldron of challenges, the daughter found her way,
With a pinch of her mother's spirit, she'd never sway.
She stirred in compassion, a generous measure,
Adding empathy and kindness, her greatest treasure.

From her father, she borrowed a dash of good fortune,
But she knew in her heart, it wouldn't be her cartoon.
She'd blend it with care, mix it with her might,
For her mother's tenacity, she'd always fight.

In the oven of life, she baked her own path,
With ingredients gathered from love's aftermath.
A pinch of her father's luck, a dash of her mother's grace,
She crafted her essence, her unique embrace.

And as she emerged, a creation divine,
A daughter of misfortune, in her, stars brightly shine.
She carried her legacy, a blend so pure,
A recipe of resilience, forever endure.

I think I’ll always be at least a little afraid of my own reflection.
It betrays me,
Stares at me with my father’s eyes and my mother’s smile.
Taunts me, teases me, tortures me,
Forces me to face all those faces that came before mine,
All the faces reminding me that I can’t change where I came from.

My eyes are supposed to be beautiful,
Big and green and thoughtful,
Intelligent, intoxicating, inexorable.
Though I’ve never found any beauty in my father’s eyes,
I find his relentless selfishness,
His arrogance,
His stubbornness,
His refusal to help others escape the pain I know he’s always carried,
Reflected in mine.
I stare at a mirror,
He stares back,
Reminding me that green is not just a color of beauty,
But also the color of the selfish isolation I am doomed to endure.

I don’t see beauty in my mother’s smile,
I hear all the hateful words that passed her lips,
All the words screamed at me until I finally began to believe them,
Encouraging me to make myself smaller,
Make myself less me.
I picture her hovering over me,
Her grip so tight on my wrists that I can feel the bruises forming,
Her face distorted by my tears as she hisses at me,
“Cruel,” “cold,” “undesirable,” “unlovable,” “unfixable.”
I imagine her soft smile,
The same smile she wore every time she swore she was proud of me,
The same smile everyone tells me I share with her,
Sweet and feminine and classically romantic,
Twisted into the spitting image of hate and disappointment she won’t let me forget.

I wish people wouldn’t search so hard for my beauty.
I wish they wouldn’t take my face,
My features all stolen,
As a representation of my being.
The big, green, eyes,
The charming, uneven, smile,
Long thick hair and tiny, little, freckles,
Femininity, romance, perfectly imperfect to keep you interested,
Just unique enough to make you think you’d never find a replacement.
It’s all so pretty, so perfect, so pointless.
It may captivate you,
But it doesn’t tell the story of what lies beneath,
All you’d have to endure to keep it in your life.

It’s not easy to see beyond my face,
Or my attitude,
Or my wit,
All designed to intrigue.
It’s not easy to stare into my eyes and watch them fill with tears,
Watch the way my face falls,
Farther and farther from your perception of my beauty.
It’s not easy to hold slender hands when they tremble,
So violent you’d think there was an earthquake rattling around in my mind.
It’s not easy to trace the outline of my figure when I’ve become too thin,
The valleys between my ribs,
The sharp ridges of my hips are too scary.
I may be easy to look at,
So easy to admire,
But I am not easy to love.

I ache for the love of which I have been denied for so many years.
I want to be beautiful for all that I’ve endured,
All that I carry with me,
The pain I’ve felt,
The stories I’ve collected,
All the broken pieces of old versions of me that I’ve slaughtered on my own accord.
I want you to think that I am beautiful even though I can never accept it.
I want you to still think that I’m beautiful when my skin is ripped to shreds,
Torn by the blade in my own hands,
When my eyes are sad and empty,
When my smile eludes you.
I want you to still think that I can be beautiful.

I am so tired of bleeding my soul for people who just want to look at me,
So sick of letting people in who find everything beneath the surface of my face ugly.
I am so much bigger than my body,
So much more beautiful than my face,
But it will never matter.
People will always praise my father’s eyes and my mother’s smile,
The traits glued to me that bleed into my mind,
Infect my soul with all of their hatred and anger and disgust.
People may always call me beautiful, but just once, I want someone to find my beauty to be more than skin deep.

Father is the black

next to the red smouldering --


of the cigar tip.

Our trajectory is unknowable, you tell me: the planet
corkscrews around the Sun, sure,

but the Sun corkscrews around a black hole at
the heart of the Milky Way,

and our whole galaxy travels on some mysterious,
incalculable vector. But sister, I saw a photograph

in which two whale sharks were brought to
heel by men in simple reed boats just

off the coast of the Philippines. All that they had
to do was often feed

the sharks many gallons of grocery-store frozen
shrimp, poured from plastic garbage bags into

their yawning six-foot maws to portside.
Gargantuan, sure, but still

as obedient and eager for food as backyard
squirrels. I remembered a grainy

internet video—I saw it probably seven or
eight years back—in which

a captured whale shark was winched
ashore in Madagascar, or

maybe it was the Philippines again—no matter—
the thing still had life left

in it and struggled to breathe while a crowd of
people gathered around—there were

women carrying babies, girls holding baskets atop
their heads—and then the

men came with a long slender blade and sliced clean
through the whale’s spine, vivisected it

right there on the dock, and the onlookers stood there quite
unfazed—I remember

being shocked at the effortlessness of the cut,
the pinkness of the whale’s blood,

and the boredom in the onlookers’ eyes. Our father
took us down to San Antonio

on one of his business trips there when we were five
or six—I think

you were probably too young to
remember it—

it was when you and I saw the ocean for the first
time. We drove down to the Gulf

of Mexico, and we saw waves breaking
out near the horizon in pale

sunlight. I kept scanning for a dorsal
fin off beyond

the breakers, thinking that I might spot one—
sandy brown, mottled with

cream spots and glistening—so that I might be able to
say to you, pointing, “look,

sister, there is a whale shark!” Years
later we would learn

that he traveled down to San Antonio so
frequently because he was a philanderer. As

a child I believed that whale sharks
crisscrossed the ocean following

paths that we couldn’t fathom, that
their concerns were somehow

beyond our comprehension, but then
Keppler pinned down

the shape of the Earth’s orbit over four
hundred years ago,

and the lives of ancient sea
titans are sundered

effortlessly
by men with indifferent faces.

In a bedroom in small-town Pennsylvania,
you’ll find an unmade bed,
a pile of clothes on the floor—
clean but not folded,
open drawers and dusty shelves,
a desk in the corner of the room
with pictures laid across it.

When I caught my first fish at six.
I held it at arm’s length by the fishing line
to avoid the slimy scales,
a frown on my face from being forced
to sit silently in the cold.

When my family went to Marco Island,
my sister and I, sifting sand for the best seashells
in our matching swimsuits and hats.
Mom and dad’s fights forgotten in our fun.

High school graduation
posing with my best friend since first grade,
diplomas in one hand and an extra cap held between us
because not everyone survived all four years.

Move-in day at college,
sitting on my raised bed with a grey comforter
and two decorative pillows the color of cotton candy.
Sweat on my brow from southern humidity
and moving furniture without the help of a father.

The pictures are merely snapshots
that lack the full story.

How I learned what it meant for love to fall apart
when I was eight years old.
My sister warned me before it happened,
told me what a divorce was.
I mistook her for joking until they called us upstairs.
Dad cried when they told us, but mom held her tears
until the day he left. The sounds of her cries
escaping from behind a closed door.
“This doesn’t mean we don’t love each other.”
But that’s exactly what it meant.

How I was taught by my father that love is conditional,
and I repeatedly needed to prove myself
through good grades and unquestioning obedience.
Forced to stay home to spend time with the family,
sitting wordlessly on the couch while he watched TV.
Made guilty for wanting to spend time with friends
because that somehow meant that I was a bad daughter.
It’s funny—I never asked myself if he was a good father.

If you look harder at the bedroom,
you’ll find journals filled with bitter words,
screws from disassembled pencil sharpeners, loose razors, and Aquaphor,
food wrappers stuffed in hidden places,
a closet brimming with junk and pairs of shoes,
evidence of a story untold. Until you.