9/18/12

Dear Papa,

It's not over.
It didn't end.
It never will.

There is no time, no distance that could make me
any less your daughter.
You knew that already, I think.
I didn't understand when you
said that I had
grown up years ago.
This was only a marker, the
bubble baths and crayon art, my
formative years, so well documented in
Mama's office, so that people always ask if she has
grandchildren,
had ended long ago.

Every bubble we blew,
every story we read,
the formulas you struggled to teach me and
the eggs for dinner when Mama was
out late,
the articles you found for me,
the Sinatra songs you learned to like,
they're with me here.

Your presence is in the
curl in my hair and the
way I read poetry, for
impact, in how I
like my coffee and
how I like my
people.

I grew up your daughter, and was afraid that grown I wouldn't be.
Now I know that your impact
is unchanging.

When I go, and
when you go, it
makes no difference.

It's only miles.

Love,
yr daughter

9/16/12

Dear Papa,

I haven't started the book you sent.
It's on my night stand, under a
 couple others that I'm
pretending to read.

Maybe inside the book
you sent,
there is some hidden truth, some
formula for
letting go.

I'm a curiosity, Papa, a
character in a novel with an
interesting backstory.
We might study my motives
and emotions, my rising and falling,
and tie them to specific instances,
or patterns.

We like backstories, and motives.
We are fascinated by the minute
part of the mind we are able to understand, amazed by how much,
how little
of this great mysterious aspect of life we can
comprehend.

Mine would be too personal, because you
love me,
and what motivates me would make you
helpless.

I'll bring the book, then, today.
And I'll look for answers you didn't mean to send.

I find immense comfort in the safety you imagine for me.

Love,
yr daughter

9/4/12

Dear Papa,

When we left, I woke up to a sky full of stars and a
porch full of roses, peachy in the yellow glow of
a lamp on the wall, and I
never breathed air so thin and sweet,
crisp on my cheeks, and our
house,
our street, kissed me goodnight,
good morning,
goodbye.

I left behind nothing, nothing,
everything.
Clean space, clean slate,
empty white walls,
like the ones I found here.

I'm filling them up,
photographs smile and
a calendar hangs.

In the darkness, eyes closed, I see only those stars,
and smell only those roses.



Love,
yr daughter

8/24/12

Dear Papa,

It's down to hours.
I uncovered layers of
names I'd forgotten, who
peopled my world for a time.
We wander into each others lives
eyes closed, mouths open,
and then exit wordlessly,
into a blur of lost faces and
lost interest.

My walls are empty now.

Nothing is ending, you say,
it ended years ago.
you're right, of course.
These goodbyes are temporary, unnecessary,
or are voicing the otherwise
wordless exits of those
not destined to stay.

It starts in your bones,
and flows through you,
formless, random,
unrestricted by shape.
No order, no meaning, no anger;
Only the chaos that is life.

I'll wander carefully,
only half-blind.

Love,
yr daughter

8/16/12

Dear Papa,

There's still time,
you say.
Mama's counting dinners on our calender,
and I write lists, categorizing
my childhood into boxes.
Here are the figurines picked out of years of
Red Rose tea boxes;
here are teddy bears and
Russian novels and 
when I pick the sweaters off the floor,
you can see the little round marks in the wood,
a tribute to years of impractical shoes.
Here is this body that
isn't mine.

There's still time,
nothing to worry about.
you said.
I was fourteen
and Mama was
nervous when I
unbraided my long, dark hair,
and cut it into the curls that
fall down my back,
my tiny rebellion.
She found out in a phone call,
and felt betrayed.

"You look like a whore," she said,
and I hung up.

You knew better than to intervene,
and I looked at my reflection with
bitter amusement.

For a time, I thought I could own it
if I controlled it.
I found power in shape,
and sought safety in power.

There isn't any, Papa.
 
Love,
yr daughter

8/12/12

Dear Papa,

You're on to me.
You have to be.
I know you are.

I come and go through windows like your eyes,
leaving coffee cups and earrings and lipstick stains.
I'm a  phonecall away, always.
This spring, I called home late once
to lie about where I was sleeping.
Before the lie, we talked a while,
just chatter, about the mutual part
of our lives.
Then, we said goodnight, and hung up.
and I lay awake in a bed you wouldn't want me in,
until the guilt was overwhelmed by the
memory of laughter in your voice.

I never slept well there.

Now, the lies are natural.
Or I don't even bother with them.
I say I'm not coming home,
and your "Ok, goodnight" clicks while I
listen to the second of silence
that preludes
my thoughts in the night.

In two weeks, you take me to my new life.
I hope I can make one more stable than this.
I'll try not to waste our time anymore.

Love,
yr daughter

7/25/2012

Dear Papa,

Once, you had a dream that
some boy had hurt me.
Mama woke you up with your hands around her neck,
because you wanted to crush him.
"Boys are jerks." you say periodically, shaking your head
 starting early,
while Mama braided my pigtails.
Maybe you thought if you started early enough,
you could protect me from all of the mistakes,
or that I would learn not to take it
personally.
Or that I would stay your daughter and
only your daughter.
That the eyes that fell on me would notice only the
curves of my smile,
and that every smile that befell me would be genuine.
It didn't work, of course.
Like every other daughter, I grew into
a little woman,
 and like all little women,
I make mistakes
and take it all personally.
They smile ironic half-smiles,
and I'm not sure whether to cry or
laugh;
because it really doesn't matter.
 your hands,once giant to my infant fingers,
don't need to crush anyone.
These things happen, you know.
I don't think the
mistakes
will ever stop.
But maybe, someday I'll make fewer (not less, Papa, I know),
and when I meet the man who
will someday tell my daughters, "Boys are jerks."
I'll know better than to take things
so personally.

Thank you for wanting to protect me.

Love,
yr daughter

7/11/2012

Dear Papa,

The sun is rising; but I've been up since 2:30.
It's been a strange four hours, because I've been alone.
These last couple weeks, I was busy.
Every second was scheduled, planned, structured.
I exercised and ate vegetables and applied cuticle cream.
all of my temperaments were
shaped by the expectations of our journey.
Soon, it will start again.
I will be busy working and going out,
and I will convince myself I like it.
Because I think the order is good for me.
Because I like being too busy to think.
We each waited an hour at the airport,
at different places.
and when I saw you, I was so relieved and
the weight of my loss, my ending, my beginnings,
rolled away as we talked about
our normal life.
and I realized that much as I
missed you, I didn't want to come back.
It's easier, over there.
No one needs surgeries and there are no forms to fill out,
and all you have to do is follow
the rules,
and they're easy.
Everything is under control.
So now, I'm cleaning everything up and
writing new rules.
Because when it comes down to it,
what else can I do?

I lit a candle for you, in a Cathedral in Berlin.
it cost a euro, but that's just a coin
and coins aren't real money.
I heard god laughing at my atheist prayer.

Love,
yr daughter

6/23/2012

Dear Papa,

Today, you forgot me.

You were supposed to pick me up at five,
but you weren't there, so I called home, to ask Mama what time you had left.
And when you picked up, your voice was laced with sleep,
and the end of a dream grew like a vine, into my ears and through me.
When I was little, I ate watermelon seeds and sunflower seeds,
and you always said I'd have a garden out my ears.
Once, I licked the pollen from a calla lily, to grow them for the garden.
I told you in giggles,
 and Mama sent me to wash out my mouth, because
the turmeric-yellow centers are a little
toxic.
Nothing ever grew out of my ears,
but little seeds planted in them grew inwards,
and I  became.
I hear whispers and love songs and car horns,
rain on roofs and the radio turned low,
and they all sound like sighs.
There is a language in sighs,
and silences.
And the sigh at the end of your dream was one I knew.
I loved and hated hearing it, like a favorite story that you've
told a hundred times,
or noticing a perfect sunset, that signals the end of something more than a day.

I'm sorry I woke you.
go back to sleep.

Love,
yr daughter

6/21/2012

Dear Papa,

I watched you bike to your bone marrow test today. Mama didn't want you to bike: she's worried about you.
But I like that you are biking and
going alone;
It's like you're just running errands,
going to the grocery or the bank.
Normal, routine, every day things instead of isolated incidents,
So that it's just a part of your life and not the precursor to your death.
It doesn't make a difference, really. But it makes it easier to pretend.
and we need to pretend;
game faces as we fight the ordinary battles.
I can't cure you, clean you, kill your disease,
so I wash dishes and do laundry and go for long runs.
I am not a perfect daughter. I'm not even sure I'm a good daughter.
I want to be though, I want to be everything you want me to be.
but lately, seeing you and being here has upset me,
so I've been out,
and when I'm in, I sleep.
and sleep.
and dream.
My dreams, even my nightmares, are better than my reality
because I never dream you sick.

I am afraid to leave you in the fall.
I want to stay here and hover, and have late night conversations in the kitchen
that wake Mama upstairs.
Because at the end of each, I am afraid they are numbered.

I won't stay though;
the daughter you want wouldn't.

Love,
yr daughter

6/16/2012

Dear Papa,

I just got home, and I think you're still up, hiccuping in the other room.
You don't know that I know your hiccups are a symptom.
It seems stupid, the hiccups, but they keep you awake.
Like tiny, incessant internal screams
that your body makes in response to the
army of tiny incessant cells that are taking over your body,
my father.


Last week, you hiccuped until 3:30,
 and I think I hear them through the wall.
But I hope you aren't, and until I see you,
I can hope you are in bed, asleep, in a dream.


Call it wishful thinking,
I call it a lullaby.

Love,
yr daughter

6/13/2012

Dear Papa,

One trait of yours that I hope to adopt is the way you process information. Mama and I are instant responders, we reply as quickly as we can. We argue to learn- we test new arguments on each other, on you, on anybody who will listen to us.
You say very little, and think all the way through.
You do not need to test your arguments. When you make them, you are sure.
Of course, sometimes, you are wrong. (I think)
and there is no reasoning with you when you are. You've already done all the reasoning you're going to do.

You do that with everything, you know? Some things I would expect, but everything.
Our discussion in the grocery store yesterday, the difference between an action that simply warrants disapproval and one that harms society. Laws and rules and regulations, and the right way to make them.
You are looking for a rule, and equation, that works all the time, that caters to our beliefs.
Maybe there isn't one.
Maybe it's case by case.
But secretly, we both think there is some complicated code that would cover it all correctly.
We hunt for it when we're asleep, when we dream.
In real life, we are only tempted by problems we can't solve.
I failed a math test once, because I couldn't solve a problem
and the more time I spent on it
the more I felt like I should just finish it.
Because otherwise, all that time would be a waste.
You told me that that often happens,
in relationships, too.
You were right.

Love,
yr daughter

6/12/2012

Dear Papa,

Today is the 5th year anniversary of (my grandmother)'s death. You remember.
Mama keeps talking about how important dinner tonight is to (my grandfather). Really, what she means is that it's important to her. That's why she's so worried about who he invites, and what he makes. She wants it to honor her mother, but she also thinks it shouldn't matter to her. It's ok if it matters to him. If it matters to him, her follow-through becomes her respecting the grieving process of her elderly father. It's the difference between her duty towards her living parent and her dead one.

It's just a day. June 12, really any day in early June, they all feel the same to me.
But we mark it, and the significance we give it rides heavy. I remember things.
That's the point of birthdays, and anniversaries, and days of remembrance, I think.
A little reminder to look back and reflect on what we learned five or three years ago, and how things have changed.

Mama was a mess, remember?
She told me that she didn't get a chance to tell (my grandmother) that she loved her before she died.
I didn't know how to react. I just said "She knew."
and I think she did know.
then Mama told me my hair smelled good, like coconuts.
I hope that if[when] you die, if I don't find a time or way to say it, you know that I love you.
and I wish I could explain it in words, pack the meaning in,
like a poem,
before you gave up on poetry.
It doesn't matter that it wouldn't impact many people, Papa. That's not the point.
It would only need to reach you.
but it's a moot point; I can't.

I hope my love for you is as obvious as yours for me.
and even if it isn't, I hope someone tells me that it was, that you knew. 

Three years ago today, you were first diagnosed. I know, that means even less. Just the day of your doctors appointment, after the weeks, the months, that ended when R---- noticed the night sweats.
I remember that day with such clarity though. For you, for biology, for reality it wasn't a first day, but for me it was.

I didn't come to a single appointment. I didn't want to see it. I escaped.
I'm ready now, though.
We can watch that movie you wanted to see, something about Forks and Knives?
and pretend that we're just upstairs, or in the study.
Or I can watch a Rom Com, and you can look over my shoulder and tell me how silly it is.
I'll pretend not to notice when you cry at the end.

Love,
yr daughter

6/11/2012

Dear Papa,

I know that you are sick [again] . It scares me, because I think it will go on like this forever. You might get better [again] this summer, but then you will get sick [again] when I am 21, when I am 24, when I am 27, until you stop getting better. It's eerily the same, like a three year time bomb. I am stronger now, though. better. We don’t believe in God, you and I. Mama does a little bit. Not in a normal way, but she thinks the universe is too wonderful and mysterious to be anything but a benevolent overarching source of order. R---  has the intellectual atheism of someone too young to understand his own beliefs yet. We don’t believe in God, but I hope Mama is right. I hope that this [again] three years later is to show me how much better I am, how much better I can be than I was before. Is it selfish to think of your illness as something that is happening to me? Jeanne would think so. The cells are growing in your body. They make you tired and old.

You have Cancer.

Cancer.

Cancer.

I just have worries.

I want to be asleep so I don’t have to recognize the existence of your disease.  I don’t want you to be sick, Papa. I don’t want to be tested, it’s not worth the risk.

I want things to stay the same, stay the same.

We’re at a good place now, we have been for some time.

You’ve said things that have hurt my feelings, and I’ve done things you’ve thought are inconsiderate, but I know you think I’ve turned out pretty well and it means the world to me.

We are at a good place now, aren’t we? You laugh at my jokes, and today you helped me find the middle section of the coffee maker. I love you so much.

You know I’m not really trying as of late, don’t you? I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I use the pencil sharpener when you’re on the phone and that I respond so casually when you get really, really mad.

I don’t feel like that, really, I don’t. I’m furious, or hurt, or both. I just pretend not to be because whoever cares less wins. That’s what I’ve learned.

You will never learn that, because it’s the sort of thing that is in my nature and not yours. 

Love,

yr daughter