Daddy Lament

Cinderella could never compete with Dorthea Her skin so beautiful, I wanted to cry at her birth We were all overcome because she was a rainbow baby Today is her first prom, how did this happen? I look at my wife. She’s just a baby! I say. She can’t go to prom! She is seventeen, my wife argues. Dorthea comes down the stairs. Awe catches in my throat. I have to blink back tears. She is no longer five. Where is her Disney princess purse? What happened to the giggling eight-year-old? Where is my twelve-year-old tomboy? I glare at the young man who comes to whisk her away. She is a princess, too good for him and millions of others. Get over it, my wife says. She’ll be going to college next year. I begin plotting our move to Columbia, Missouri. She is not going without her daddy!