Daughter Father

If only you could hear me,
Hear the screams of my uncomfort
Stretching and ripping this skin dress
That I have tried to live in
For the past twenty years.
Trying to be what you wanted me to be,
Or at least what you could stand looking at.

So look at me!
Shinny and plastic but I'm not smiling.
Ripped from the heart and roots up.
Wondering if there will ever come a day
When you will see me and accept me for what I am.
Wondering if there will ever be a day that I can walk with my head up
Scuffling to school with my back pack and old shoes.
Wondering if your tongue will ever be unloosened and you can speak the words of love to me -
Daughter.
If there will ever be a day I can live with out your acceptance
Haunting me down in the foot tracks of everything I touch.

That I can touch
With out the hate and knifes
Of loneliness slipping from out between your hard lips and teeth
Killing everything I love.

I dream of the day that my rootless heart,
The roots you cut hoping I would die,
Would be free to drift like a child's balloon
Off into a new place of rainbows and neverland island.
That I can erase the name whose hate only drags me down
Like a weight on my foot in the ocean.
That I can find a word that will mean love
Instead of the bitter rejection that you have crammed down into my thoughts
And slipped into my baby bottle
Like a slow working poison.
That you have plunged like shrapnel into my heart with every missed childhood moment
And silence of ignorant, ignoring, avoidance of eyes
When I needed you to see me the most.

No more will these memories of pain and missed chances
Wake me up at night and follow my home.
No more will the dream that you will embrace your self,
The self in me,
Remove the love I have for you in my heart.
I don't need you
And I am through.