Only His Daughter While He Was in Prison

Begin by prying the blame from your ribs.

It has lived there for years,

whispering that if you were good enough,

that night would not have happened.

See the truth:

he only saw you clearly

when his world was reduced

to concrete walls and watchtowers,

when love was something mailed in paper,

and you were thrilled just to get his reply.

Once outside,

your place evaporated.

He found a woman who smiled with her teeth,

who learned your name just enough

to know how to spit it.

A woman who didn’t have to love you—

because he wouldn’t ask her to.

He let her chip at you:

small insults,

pointed silences,

rewriting your name in the family story

until it barely appeared.

And still you stayed.

Because staying was the only way

you thought love worked.

To disappear,

you must stop staying.

Choose yourself like it’s oxygen—

like the air’s been thin for years

and you’ve just remembered how to breathe.

Refuse the calls.

Decline the invitations.

Do not cross a threshold

where you are only welcome on sufferance.

Fill your holidays with your own laughter,

not the shadow of his absence

in the same room.

Understand this:

you are not disappearing into nothing.

You are returning

to the space you were born to take up.

You are more than good enough.

You always were.

You deserved to be chosen first,

to be loved without condition,

to be safe in your own family.

Vanishing is not erasure.

It is reclamation.

It is closing the door on the room

where you begged to be seen

and opening the one

where you already are.

If he notices you’re gone,

let him.

This time,

you won’t be on the other side of the bars

waiting for his choice.

This time,

you’re the one making it.