Bad Daughter, Bad Father.

You say
I’m a bad daughter
because I don’t worship you
for all the time
you were never there.

And I say—
What is there to worship?

A silence
That raised me?
An absence
I had to learn to survive?

You call it love,
but it feels like
something distant,
something I was meant to believe in
without ever touching.

And I say
you’re a bad father,

because you love me
in a way
I cannot see,
I cannot feel,
I cannot call my own.