Daddy’s Girl --- Draft 3

Thanks to Alix & Jen for some very helpful criticism on this one. Holla!

Keep quiet and watch the same Hitler special on History channel, get up
only to pee, open mouth only to remind me Hitler had syphilis or drink

root beer. Move your hand only to pet the cat, who is starting to look like
you, growing old, more than just gray sideburns now, or to pat my shoulder,

and ask okay, okay? about nothing I’ve said out loud. Keep quiet, don’t say
I love you to anyone I know- just that one girl who is not my mother, the one

locked away with all the things you’ll never tell us, like why you stopped
drinking or if you graduated high school. She is locked away with you under

Picasso postcards, Elvis collectibles. You never said I love you to anyone
I know, but you did give me that Janis Joplin CD when I was eight, taught me

all the words to the White Album and bought frilly socks for me, and my sisters,
when we were too small to shop for ourselves, the same socks I would shove

into my backpack after getting on the bus, the way I threw out the cat food
cans you put in my lunchbox every day because I was Katie Kitten my whole

life. You started to keep quiet when your dad forgot English, can’t speak
anymore since words stopped making sense, since Grandma kept praying

and you never learned how, since nothing could possibly matter anymore
but the way you taught me how to lose my brain. When I keep quiet, only you

know. Shake your head and say okay, okay.