Fathers & Daughters

Her father would betray her. Her mind harkens back to childhood swing sets, not set properly so the legs rose as she did. She never cared. Her father had built it from his own two hands, and she was her father's daughter. She fell off the path. Along the way she chose darkness. She hit every wrong decision on her way down the rabbit hole. He tried to save her. Tried to put it on himself. He thought he could fix her himself. When he looked in her eyes, he saw his little girl. The one that wore ribbons in her hair. Now she wears a tattered sweatershirt, oversized to hide the trackmarks. Her frail body drowns in the frock. When she married that man--Roger, it was her father who knew how it'd end. She could not see--or chose not to. She allowed herself to believe she had found what her parents had. That she had found her slice of suburban bliss. That things could turn around. But Roger grew cold, his heart a hollow chamber. He was not violent, he was simply never there. And that, she found to be the crueler action. It was the verge of a Tuesday when her father recieved the late night call. Roger was dead. His heart broke at each breathless sob. She'd done it. She confessed. The stuff made her mad and she couldn't bear the silence. She'd gone too far this time. She could not be saved. The holding cell was a cold steel that she longed to free herself from. She longed for backyard barbeques. For the simplicty of her youth before Roger before heroine before everything dark. Back to just her and her dad. And then he said what he said. He told that court full of strangers how he'd finally given up. He told them how she called him, the full tale of her confession. His eyes betrayed a sadness that she felt he'd lost the right to. When the verdict came down, he was inconsolable. But she was stone cold aware--her own father had sentenced her death.