If I have a daughter,
I will hold her for the first time
and feel my soul split open.
Not from beauty, but
from terror.
Because I will know
I’ve placed something pure
into a world built to destroy it.
I will have handed innocence
to a furnace.
And I will spend every waking moment
begging the universe
not to burn her.
But the universe doesn’t listen.
It never has.
She will grow
and they will take her apart,
not with knives,
but with words, with stares,
with the absence of protection.
She will be dissected slowly,
psychologically,
until she cannot tell
where she ends
and where their expectations begin.
She will learn her body is not her own
long before she learns her alphabet.
She will hear “you’re so pretty”
before she ever hears “you’re so smart.”
And every time she says no,
the world will ask her to prove
she meant it.
She will come home some nights
and throw up without knowing why.
She will claw at her skin in silence,
feeling dirty after a compliment.
She will lie awake,
replaying conversations
where she laughed when she wanted to scream.
And she will ask herself,
Did I invite this?
Was it my fault?
Am I overreacting?
And eventually,
she will stop asking.
Not because she’s okay,
but because she’s numb.
She will turn her pain inward,
like every woman taught to suffer quietly.
She will starve herself of softness,
because softness gets punished.
She will perform safety like a ritual:
walk fast, keys in hand,
smile at the man who scares her,
say “thank you” when she’s catcalled.
Not because she’s grateful,
but because she wants to survive.
And I,
I will watch.
I will watch her body carry fear
like muscle memory.
I will watch her sanity erode
under the weight of being polite
to people who see her as prey.
She will cry in bathrooms at parties.
She will flinch when someone raises their voice.
She will apologize
for simply existing at the wrong volume.
She will disappear piece by piece
until only the shell remains,
a ghost trained to smile,
to serve,
to endure.
And I,
I will hate myself.
For every time I told her the world was good.
For every time I whispered,
“It’ll be okay,”
when I knew it wouldn’t.
I will hate myself for being a man,
for being made in the image
of what will break her.
I will see her pain,
etched behind her eyes,
and know that I cannot touch it.
Not because I don’t want to,
but because I was born into the same sickness
that taught her to bleed in silence.
And the worst part,
the most unbearable,
soul-rotting truth,
is that she will not even be exceptional.
She will not be the only one.
She will be one of millions.
Millions of girls walking quietly,
smiling through trauma,
swallowing screams,
told they are too emotional
while they are dying inside.
If I have a daughter,
I will love her more than life.
And it still won’t be enough.
Because love cannot unteach
a world that feeds on her pain.
And one day,
I will stand at her door,
wanting to knock,
but too afraid to find her broken
in ways I cannot repair.
And I will realize:
I did not bring her into the world.
I delivered her to the wolves.
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