Daddy's Girl

When the radio played And you thought you could win me with a handwritten note declaring your pain in my absence and with hubris of your youth, you told me of the softness of my mouth, you knew it, to be gained by forceful lips, again, of youth that lived on beyond its time Because your daddy slept on the couch and your momma never asked for anything and you never knew there were things a woman could want So you pushed for me, and stood in the yard as summer’s light dimmed evening after evening And I believed that summer would never end, that desire would never end I knew a woman should want, my daddy brought home sweet peonies that grew beside the dairy barn and leaned down to kiss my momma at the kitchen table and touched the top of my head But your face, flinty, shadowed, was like a dare for something in the end that would pierce me with a dangerous pleasure and so I prepared. When I was ready for you you had found her, the one whose daddy had left home altogether.