A man never suffers the depths of his own cruelty
until his daughter recognizes him for the first time
He cradles the nascent woman and beholds her eyes
The human in her fixes his image and trusts him
He lifts her to his face and inhales her,
a breeze that’s settled in his lap
He turns his ear to her voice and sings
though he can’t remember when last he sung
He smooths his palm across her head and neck
and shudders at how breakable she must be
Her own hands cannot be reproduced
by any form of art
Over time, she begins to skip ahead of him
through the grass, hums for no reason
He marvels at her exuberance, laughs when
her arguments outdistance his
He discovers a quality he lacks but has
no definition for
Her ways terrify him; he fears something unknown
will crush her and she will vanish with the best
of his memories
She grows taller, bolder, more private
He watches her test herself in the mirror,
plead for approval, notices how much time
it takes and how carefully she draws herself new
with pencil and brush, how often she pulls a comb
through her fragile hair
When the doorbell rings, he smiles with her,
her face anticipating the boy outside
Later in the night when her sobs shake the settled house
he carries her pain with him outside and sits alone,
feels each sob again and again dagger sharp, confesses
the Spring Dance when he stood up the sweet girl who
had already bought his boutonniere; another woman
dressed for dinner he told he could never love,
confesses the lies he authored in greeting cards,
his battering wit, his need to be victorious and draw tears
He confesses these and other unthinkable sorrows to old breezes
haunting him now, to the faces of the women who took him in
with their eyes and trusted him to see them human
Too late he knows about women what a younger man might have
known had he looked into their eyes and seen in them his own