Not My Father
by Monica Ayala

I went to a wedding recently
Got to dress up and celebrate love
And while I teared up at the vows
It was the father-daughter dance that got me
I sat and watched the bride dance with her dad
while they laughed and smiled
Saw them float around the floor so effortlessly
You could tell they’d done it a million times before

And it hit me
I’ll never have that
Not because the institution of marriage seems kinda like horrifying to me

But because my dad doesn’t love me
And I know he doesn’t because he’s told me so many times
Has yelled it in my face during every argument
Or conversation
That he only ever says I love you if he means it
And every night I would spend sobbing into the pillow afterwards
I realize he hasn’t said it to me since I was a kid

And I can’t pinpoint the exact moment
I usually get stuck somewhere between my birth ruining his life
And how my laughter ruins his day
Maybe I just desperately imagined the three words
I’ve longed to hear from him since I was little
And in some kinda feverish delusion
Chased a dream so hard I wrote it into a memory

It’s kinda funny tho
Because I look the most like him
Well not always but like only when I’m angry
I’ve been comparing the drywall to each other
Noticed we have the same hands
One hole’s slightly smaller
But I am afraid to grow into it
Scared that one day the mark I leave
on this world is in the shape of a fist

Sometimes I feel that anger bubbling up inside of me
And I worry that I’m just a soda tab away from exploding
I always tap my cans a few times to release the tension
But you can still hear the whispered hiss trying to claw its way out
I burp under my breath in an attempt to let it go

And I refuse to let the resemblance go any further
So I go to therapy
And let myself cry in my friend’s cars
And at movies
And on mics
I don’t keep my emotions bottled up
And I allow myself to pour out before I reach the brim
So that it is not a floodgate when it happens accidentally

When I’m old, I wanna die with deep smile lines
chiseled into my cheeks
And let the furrow in my brow be so faint
People wonder if I could only afford Botox in one or the other

I have allowed myself to be soft
Not because it is easier
Being vulnerable is so much harder for me
than just shutting everyone out
But because I’ve seen the damage
a mouth full of concrete can do
The loneliness volcanos experience
when they are always ready to erupt

So I tell everyone I love them
All the time
Because I mean it
All the time

And although he does not claim me
I am still his daughter
And while our blood may boil in the same ways
I go so hard when I dance
that I have never really needed a partner
And it reminds me
That I am not my father
And these are not his hands