Your Daughter’s Voice

“Your Daughter’s Voice”
(song form)

Your daughter’s voice: a mouse, a wall that wraps itself around

and against you, and a knife-drawer into which you reach, withdraw.

She searches for cheese with silences and you dole out small,

serrated bits. Your daughter’s voice: a mouse, a wall.

Last month she cut herself, her slow crawl away from the edge a blur

of effort and exhaustion. The knife-drawer still holds her in thrall,

gleaming with her eyes’ lost brightness, holding her in the holey shawl

of reclaimed power. Your daughter’s voice: a mouse, a wall

that builds in pebbles, separates but disappears in places, barely high enough

to bounce a ball, powerless to forestall the overtures of weeds and boys,

overgrowing her now as if she were not a squall gathering force to burst onto

her own shore. Your daughter’s voice: a mouse, a wall, a warning to us all.

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