For Andrea Victoria
You are the daughter who is sleep’s beauty.
You are the woman who birthed my face.
You are a cloud creeping across the shadows,
drenching sorrows into heart-sea’s terrain.
Victory, Victoria, my beautiful whisper,
how as a baby you laughed into my neck
when I cried at your leaving
after your mother and I broke up;
how at age three you woke me up from stupid
so I would stop peeing into your toy box
in a stupor of resentment and beer;
and how later, at age five, when I moved in
with another woman who had a daughter about your age,
you asked: “How come she gets to live with Daddy?”
Muñeca, these words cannot traverse the stone
path of our distance; they cannot take back the thorns
of falling roses that greet your awakenings.
These words are from places too wild for hearts to gallop,
too cruel for illusions, too dead for your eternal
gathering of flowers. But here they are, weary offerings
from your appointed father, your anointed man-guide;
make of them your heart’s bed.