what, what am I do to with all of this life?

The first image reads:

My father is a good man. Sort of. He is good when I compare him to His own father, and that's enough. I hope. My father and I are more alike that I'd care to admit, and whenever I feel Pure rage, I know I am my father's daughter.

The second image reads:

My father has gotten ... better. I cannot help but wonder if it is too late. He now asks me why I am so Angry, why I raise my voice. He does not understand that I learned it all from him.

The third and final image reads:

I know it is my father's first time on this Earth, too. And I know He had it worse when he was little. But I was little too.

A poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, from *Annie Allen*, 1949:

truth

And if sun comes How shall we greet him? Shall we not dread him, Shall we not fear him After so lengthy a Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him, Though we have prayed All through the night-years— What if we wake one shimmering morning to Hear the fierce hammering Of his firm knuckles Hard on the door?

Shall we not shudder?— Shall we not flee Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter Of the familiar Propitious haze?

Sweet is it, sweet is it To sleep in the coolness Of snug unawareness.

Well, that’s finished. The woman who cherished her suffering is dead. I am her descendant. I love the scar-tissue she handed on to me, but I want to go on from here with you fighting the temptation to make a career of pain.

by Jane Kenyon

Like primitives we buried the cat with his bowl. Bare-handed we scraped sand and gravel back into the hole.

They fell with a hiss and thud on his side, on his long red fur, the white feathers between his toes, and his long, not to say aquiline, nose.

We stood and brushed each other off. There are sorrows keener than these.