A young woman came to see me yesterday. I know it’s my daughter, yet something stops the word daughter from coming out of my mouth, any of my mouths. There is word-daughter and there is daughter-daughter and word-daughter is the symbol denoting and defining this young woman’s relationship to me: she-daughter makes me-father. Yet … there is a loose connection somewhere, faulty wiring, and with no felt and innate recognition of this young woman as my daughter, the word daughter becomes nil and void, two gray syllables dying in a vague mortuary. I see her, this young woman, and it is there, in a vacant slot, the history between us packed into a single crystal lying fragile and solvent on the tip of my tongue, living and dying there … If I could speak the word, if I could hear myself speak it, perhaps the crystal would dissolve in open air and our history would prosper as revelation and archive. I would become lighted within. The word doesn’t come. Something holds it back, holds it down. It falls into line with the other vanquished words. I have forgotten how to speak. The other non-words corked in darkness, the other worlds I’ve lost. The young woman standing before me models a blacked-out mirror, a late night fallout, so I avert my gaze. I think this makes the young woman sad.