Robert Butler: The Deep Green Sea

Father, I am here. I left the dark burning of this incense for you. I offer your spirit the peace that comes from the love and prayers and devotion of your daughter and I ask you for the harmony and the peace that a father can give to his family.

I wait. I do not blame you for this pain. It is the suffering that comes from desire, my love. I desire the lie of our two nights of touching. The true lie of it. I desire, as well, that moment clinging to your back. I would find peace in just that. I light another stick of incense now, and another. I would fill my lungs with the smoke of your soul. I ask for you to give me peace, even as I offer you the same thing. We will try each night. We will try.

My father, my love, on this day, one month after her birth, I took our daughter to a pagoda, and a monk poured special water from the altar into a white jasmine flower. Then I held her before a great sandalwood statue of Long Vuong, the Dragon King, and our daughter’s dark eyes were open and she was very still and the monk put the blossom in my hand and I brought it gently over her face. My hand was very steady, Father, and she waited with great patience, a patience that I pray I will learn from her. And I tipped the blossom ever so slowly, and the water swelled and swelled, and then a single drop formed at the sharp tip of a petal, and as if she knew what gift this was, our daughter opened her mouth and the drop fell onto her tongue.

Father, her words will be sweet as jasmine all her life. One day her sweet words will join mine and rise with this smoke to you. She will atone for us, my darling. She will love you, always, with the pure love of a child who owes her life to her father. And I will love you, too, as I have been given to do, always.