Daddy’s Game
Amy J. Sprague

I imagine you must’ve shut
yourself off somehow—the way
you’d eventually teach me to do—
before you entered my room
like a king’s shadow.

I hear the scrape of your jeans
your hands hot and big like swings;
I’m young so I love you. I do as you say.
You blow smoke in my face.

Now, here, I slip
because you taught me how to shut off—
how to die inside,
and I have only memories
of my body:

fear, arousal, panic and pain,
death around every corner
shh girl shh
I hid so well I lost me
in this confusion of a woman
trying to bud from
what’s already been picked.

Return to Archive