Pain aside
all feelings are
prefaced by thoughts;
mostly irrational thoughts,
but thoughts
nevertheless.
Loss, however,
is not necessarily
preceded by possession
and as for “the scenic route”
and “the long way round”
all they have in common,
seriously, is the destination.
By Jim Murdoch
I’m imagining
the woman my daughter will become
or at least who I hope she will become—
as opposed to who she’s likely to become—
reading
a poem I wrote when I wasn’t
the man I am now,
the man I’ll become or
the man she’ll think of me as
where
the version of my daughter I carry in my head
has a heart to heart with
a fictionalised version of my real daughter
about who’s actually his favourite
and
being disappointed because the poem—
which, for the record, isn’t this one—
never has the guts to commit and
she doesn’t know which dad to be mad
with
but I expect she’ll come to suspect
we’re probably all partly to blame.