my father's daughter
2004-02-12

Every girl has issues with her father.

I love the idea of him. I love the stories of his youth, his brilliant words, his genius wit. I love the father of my mother's memories, the young man who wooed her with Indonesian poetry, who wrote plays and antagonised "the authorities".

I hate the distant, overbearing figure who, even across oceans, could still hurt me with his words.

Too many have told me that I am my father's daughter.
My eyes are his eyes, my skin his skin.
My ideas, my thoughts, all his.

I have begun to wonder that maybe these dark spells that ever so often bind me into uselessness, the whispers, the scratches, the terrifying doubts, are all gifts from him, all my inheritance.