Daddy’s Little Girl.

When I was younger,
They called me Daddy’s little girl.
I was still a child,
soft, unknowing,
too innocent to imagine
we would slowly fall apart,
splitting apart, piece by piece,
until he broke me all at once.

He shattered me with his words,
those words:
“Go take your life, I don’t care.”
And I believed him.
I carried them like a promise,
tried again and again
to disappear,
just to prove I could,
just to keep my word.

He shattered me with the cruelest echoes,
those words:
“You’re too small, too fragile, no one wants that.”
So I forced myself to change,
to take up less space,
to reshape every inch of me,
to become someone worth choosing,
only to realize
He was the one who needed fixing.

He shattered me with everything he ever said,
those words:
“You’re nothing more than a child.”
And I knew that,
I was eight.
Just eight years old,
yet old enough to feel
like I was already too much,
or not enough at all.

And it’s been years since.
But some nights,
lying awake, staring at the ceiling,
I drift back
to when I was just
Daddy’s little girl,
nothing more,
nothing less,
just a little girl
in a pink dress.