For My Daughter

I found this while looking through a long-forgotten folder on my computer -

"I sit waiting for her to come, the mills of my mind spinning. Thinking of what she will do, what she’ll tell me, what she is thinking.

She knocks on the door and I shiver. Will she throw a tantrum, will she shout? Will she cry on my man shoulders? Or just look at me and make me wish I fade out.

Pa they call me a whore

They abuse me when I bow

Pa they call me a whore.

When there was light she was my rib. Then was born the artist’s critic. She is my own but I fear her, for I once was in that seat. I feel like an Iscariot, damned to a painful death I bought for myself.

I gave her life and let her go

And to say now she’s knocking on the door

Pa they call me a whore

They abuse me when I bow

Pa they call me a whore.

I want to say sorry and that I don’t think so. That I’ll always be there, now that things have gone sour. But I know its all a waste. She’ll still stand under the blazing sun while I be a shade to none but one.

There is no sun, I think I’ll tell her, there are no heroes. They are just men who, at the end of the honest work of a day, don’t want to go home and say that I lost my heart to a whore. That I lost my war to a whore.

It all happened one fine morning when she came knocking as everyday. So I guess I’ll just wait for her to leave as yesterday and any other day, her own way.

There, I killed it."