shameful daughter

perhaps I am not as good of a daughter

as I am a scientist.

or perhaps it is exactly because I am skeptical

that I make a shameful daughter.

I speak above my father

calmly,

without raising my voice.

his aggression echoes between my ears,

though they have adapted

to no longer absorb the dissonance.

I point out abnormalities

that are collectively silenced,

falsified by faith in the family name.

I perceive patterns

that nauseate their reality into delusion,

a distortion in data

that no trendline can linearize into meaning.

I make notes in my diary

like a lab notebook,

to record observations

in order to make sense of the world around me.

like Galileo,

I would rather be grounded in truth

than believed.

perhaps being a shameful daughter

is what molded me

into a devout scientist

one guided by intuition

rather than the normative,

who identifies biases

and rejects familiar comfort,

who digs into the cyclical nature of generations

to evolve through awareness.

I can decorate my family name

with prefixes deserving of praise,

though no amount of education

can dissolve the discomfort

I carry to the dinner table.

so I set it down between the plates
like a small, persistent lantern,
trusting that someone after me
will eat in its light
and call that inheritance.