Punishment

. . . my father takes my face in his hands. He tips it up and kisses
my closed eyes, my throat. I feel his fingers in the hair at the nape
of my neck. I feel his hot breath on my eyelids.
Kathryn Harrison: The Kiss

I wear the guilt like chains
about my ankles,

welded so I cannot fully open my legs,
cannot walk without

scuffing my slow feet
like the old woman I have become.

I only wanted love—a pure love, a father's love—
not this rotten gift

that is by right by mother's.
I never wanted to usurp her troubled bed.

Now even if I blinded myself
I would still see our coupling, wild and violent

as a storm on the cusp of May
and my spirit is like a ship, foundering

in the gale of emotion,
damned to sudden and eternal death.