We read Sylvia in school today.
Teacher thought I’d enjoy her last line:
“Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”
If I’m honest, I did; I loved it
(it reminded me so much of you).

But honesty compels me to say—
To admit—that you aren’t Nazi-like.
You treat all folks equally horrid.
No Aryan love does live in your heart,
Though the fascist in our home, you are.
I was eleven when you left us
And I prayed you would never return
For, you bastard, Daddy, I was done.
Yet you were not through with us, were you?

You came back home and you drained us all,
Not a vampire draining our blood,
But an incubus draining our souls.
Burned, we did, an effigy of you;
It went up in smoke, much like our dreams—
Which you stole and battered to pieces.
And even “daddy’s girl” wasn’t safe
From the destruction wrought in our home.

Then you, screaming Dutch obscenities
While your belt flayed my brother’s backside.
Such hate for the one who loved you most—
Who prayed that you’d be saved from yourself—
But you beat him with words, and did worse;
You took everything that he had.

Dutch, Not German; Not Nazi but insane;
Killed all that might have given you love.
Brute hearted you with your neat mustache,
Though a beard graces the chin beneath;
Brown eyes instead of Aryan blue,
No God, but no swastikas either—
Her father and you not the same.
But for every difference noted,
At least one thing in common remains.
So I read Daddy again, and I think,
“Maybe Plath had it right, after all.”