Self Indulgent Posting of Half-Finished Poetry, Part 2

Okay, for no other reason than that I feel like it, I am putting this one out there. While most poems I indulge in are not typically of the autobiographical variety (in this area, I'm more interested in the words themselves -- like in this one -- than blathering on about myself), this one is a bit personal, actually, so I hesitate -- but at the same time I aim to be a more fearless writer, so what the hell.

Uh, not finished, as they are never never ever finished. Never. Ever.

What Needs to be Reconciled

I am afraid of this: that, someday, my daughter will not love me.

That one day, or over a course of days, she will pull away, a skydiver whose chute has just deployed, up and up and up until I can no longer see. She will be a blur, a wisp, a caveat, so distant that I question if it were ever her, really. It is easy to imagine. It is easy.

Each day, there are new reasons. Each day, she is less a girl. Each day, she pushes herself upward, a race of growing bones and needs. I ask too much. I wish things for her that I once wished for me. That I still wish for me.

She curls into my arms, long legs folding up beneath, round face a perfect match for the crook of my neck, even as she is long, long, longer almost than even me. I think of her that way -- long, not tall -- is that strange? Long limbs and long hair and long future rippling out ahead like a ribbon of highway, rippling and pale and lean, cutting through wilderness like water, like diamond, like a guillotine.