Tee Ball or I Am Trying to Talk About My Father’s Inability to Love a Daughter,

but there are reasons I ever deny or pull back the dresses and drapery in the closet. It is the way your mouth moves each time you call me your son. The way that dress hem hits the thigh right where you would squeeze it in the passenger seat of a rental car. It is that stupid way your mouth moves. This is a love letter to a father. Not because I loved to sit in the tree stand at five AM or be gawked at for spinning all the way around, trying to hit the ball on the tee. Not because I love being called your son, or being your son. I like it just fine. I feel no hatred toward being your son. It is because my father never really wanted a daughter. Said God would only give him what he can handle. How do you get a handle on a body? What is a daughter anyway? I am afraid I have become the kind of daughter my mother was. is. The kind of not daughter that both threatens and draws desire. What does it look like for a daughter when her bodies sex is teased apart? You don’t understand, I don’t care about being your daughter. I just want to be something of yours. Anything, of yours. I realize that should not be what I want. I still love when an older man with a golf tan squeezes my hand so hard, he cracks knuckles. He can’t feel small here. I love when he says he’s heard about me. I love the way his neckties contrast his teeth. I love pride.  

I love you.

Benny Sisson is a trans poet and writer, who also works in publishing. She holds a BA from UArizona, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Adelphi University. Her work has been featured with Lunch Ticket, Foglifter Press, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. She is currently a Marketing Assistant for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Book & Media, and lives in her hometown of Tacoma, WA.