After Jacqueline Lyons

To daughter is to duty.
To swear loyalty to the country of your parents.
To believe without quotation.
To populate each passport with the sayings of your feet.
To daughter is to speak the language of the father,
to darn the worries of the mother. To drive the oxen into the wilderness,
feeding on the mean hope of the future.
To daughter is to break free from whatever they’ve left,
or didn’t leave,
to fall farther and farther from glory
to grow a new constitution from the allspice of a voice,
to spin your own nebula from their wounds.
To make a salad of dying,
to root the father like the heart of the world tree,
to lift the mother to the arc of the moon’s invisible bow,
to raise yourself
to the stature of a very tiny star.