It felt good to get it out.

I’m sure you thought that all roads led to you. That I wouldn’t find my own lanes. That my ties to others were too strong to break the one you made with me. But I’m my father’s daughter. I leave when I want to and especially when I don’t. I’ve never loved another more than I love myself, and I never will. My father is a vase filled with nothing until he dug deep enough to find the dirt that grew the flowers that made me. I’m his daughter, filled with his blood and his bone: full enough to recognize me in a room, hollow enough to want me there when I’m not. Ghostly enough to think me up when you want me that badly. My father has never belonged to anyone, and neither has his daughter. You look at me with the eyes of someone who only fights for what they can’t subdue, and my father introduced me to you long before I knew who you were. It’s a burden being my father’s daughter when I wanted to be your lover instead. But being his daughter is safer. I know what to expect here. My father introduced me to a love like yours long before you ever said my name, so now it doesn’t hurt anymore. Asymptomatic is what they call it. I’m no longer your symptom, or my father’s. I’m his daughter first, my own warning second. Your prodrome third. But I’m my father’s daughter. I hate I had to show you before I could tell you.