HM THEMES

Daddy, there’s so much you think you know about your little girl. Let’s start with that. I’m not that little girl anymore, daddy. I wear lipstick, I wear heels, sometimes I leave the house without a bra on in fifty-degree weather, I stole two cigarettes from you that one time you took mom out for a drink. I ended up replacing them, but still. Didn’t you warn me about lung cancer, daddy? Didn’t you say it kills? It doesn’t seem to stop you from pulling all that poison into your lungs. You forget that little girls are impressionable. Cancer is chic to the permeable mind. It sounds like a flower. You blame mom for your habit, but don’t worry: she’ll get a letter, too. Last year, I climbed the roof of a girlfriend’s house and we stood on the very edge so that our toes hung off the edge a little, like icicles, and we threw our heads back and laughed hard into the purple bruise of the night. “We are young,” we chanted, fingers linked. “We are young.” I never felt more beautiful than I did that night, daddy, with my hair streaming down my back and my eye makeup smudged, never felt the exhilaration from risking my young, beautiful life on the roof of a two-story home at three o’clock in the morning. Daddy, I know you thought briefly that I was gay in high school because I never brought home a boy, never told mom who would tell you that I kissed my fair share of boys, that if I got too close to them I could set the air on fire between our bodies, and that you didn’t have to worry about having “one of those” under your roof. I hated you for that a little, daddy. Why do you hate them so much? Is that really the worst thing that could happen to your little girl? Love is love is love is love. Don’t you want me to fall in love? Don’t you want me to have what you and mom have, even if it’s with another daddy’s girl? But no, daddy, I’m not gay. Girls are beautiful like oil paintings, beautiful in the swing of their hips and the sensuality of their thighs, but it’s boys that drive me mad, tall boys with coffee eyes and pale skin and shadows in the cheeks that never go away no matter how much or how often they eat. Boys on the brink of death, daddy, that’s what I like, because I want to be the one who brings them back. Something else you should know, daddy: while I always love you, no, I do not always like you. You, who always like to be right, you, who establishes your dominance over everyone else in the house, you, who like to come first. Your temper, your impatience, all the anger in your heart. You’ve been living on this earth for 51 years. You know how ugly it is. I’m constantly surprised by your surprise, and you get mad because I never am. That’s one thing about my generation, daddy: we’re all aware of how your generation fucked things up for us. We know we have to fix your mistakes. But it’s okay. I’ll lower my blame, direct it towards the White House, overseas, at everyone else’s daddies and papas. It might break your heart to know this, daddy, but the minute I step foot out of this house, out of this godforsaken town, I’m not looking back. Expect post cards from Rome, Vienna, Paris, London, Egypt, Prague. I’ll call you collect from New York, send picture messages from the Floridian coastline, write you two sentence letters on the back of receipts for alcohol and condoms. I won’t look back, daddy. I’ll miss you, but every time you ask me when I’m coming home, the line will crackle, fade out once, and then disconnect. I’ll break your heart, daddy, because it’s the only way you’ll let me go. But don’t worry, daddy, you won’t hurt forever. One day I’ll come home, with an engagement ring, a Bachelor’s, a baby, or a book that this letter will be published in with my name on it. Maybe all of the above. And you’ll smile and cry a little, because we both know that a true daddy’s girl always comes back to her roots. 

April 16th ∙ 154
tagged: personal  prose 
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    Daddy, there’s so much you think you know about your little girl. Let’s start with that. I’m not that little girl...
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    SO WELL WRITTEN, I got goosebumps
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