——For my daughter

Every night brings

an uneasy truce, a compromise

negotiated between where we were

and where she wants to be.  She is flying

blind into her life: an apartment in Seattle, far away

from the middle-of-nowhere-Midwestern-mediocre life she imagines

mine to be.  She is gluttonous

with power, carrying signs demanding

something, spitting icicles while I rage, impotent,

my mouth an angry dash,

fists clenching and unclenching, grasping

at thin air.