My Father’s Daughter

The guitar strings enter
my throat.
The feeling of
metal intwines me
my tongue is squeezed
but it is soothed.
The wires are not
sent to damage
to cut
or to make bleed.

They are full
of joy.
And they
taste good to me
and to him
and to his finger tips
that run
quickly
hands that slide
back and forth.
This may be
the only joy
he knows.

And for the first time
in a long time
I taste the joy
not the depression
or the bitterness.

There is no call for requests
but I throw out my requests.
I want desperately
to feel our voices
twist together
as we are transported
to the first land
our blood was shed on.

I request war songs
I remember
from childhood
never knowing
I was singing of war.
It was celebration
and culture,
stained with death.

And now I sing of war
with him
and am
simply
reminded
of childhood.

Strange
how the savory sound
of violence
reminds me of
those better days
when I was held
by those hands
that move twelve
strings
so gently.

I swallow his notes
as my voice bellows
native songs
These
are words
I trip on.

But even then
with scraped knees
and jammed wrists
it tastes good
to trip
on words coming out
and not
being swallowed down.

This
this is the taste of
a father’s joy
of a father’s love.
And it tastes so damn good
to not choke
on those guitar strings
that I’ve only learned
to
spit back up.

I watch a man
transform before my eyes.
His hardness
must shatter
for his music to make way.

I am
my father’s daughter
I think,
watching him disappear
as vibrations cut the air
and I remember
how my pages get
covered in ink.

His guitar is
scarred with his love.
It is worn
from these dark basement
days.
It has been trapped
by this man
he has held it more
than he has held his children.

This carved wood
knows more of my father’s heart
than I’ll ever have the pleasure
of learning.
I know,
I may never hear him
so I listen carefully as she speaks the love
he could never say.
And I watch him
as he teaches the little boy
how to hold her stature.
As if to tell him
“Boy
this is what it means
to love.”

And how I used to damn
him
for his cold heart.
But I see that his warmness
has
only been
trapped
mutilated
and
transferred
through his art.
So I listen to her
as she sings his pain.

And I know
how I am
my father’s daughter.