The Undertaker's Daughter | Toi Derracotte
This book of poetry prompted me to look at my father differently. Derracotte’s efforts to understand where trauma lingers from old wounds, how it is ingested and seeps out in the same cadence as her father’s, is familiar to me. I resented mine for leaving me, trauma lived in absence, his presence only known by the carpet slowly filling out his shoe prints. Derracotte denied herself a lot because her father demanded her to, and what incredible work to unravel his voice from hers, to revisit the torments and with the discernment that she is the narrator. It is her voice so alive. It seemed with each poem, once indistinguishable lies, became clear. With that clarity came more questions and reflections, which didn’t necessarily have the mark of peace, but an unraveling of what was once heavy did make room for it. Sometimes my cadence sounds like my father’s and though I do not question his love, I have questioned how he loves. How God is redeemer and yet a seeming accomplice to his avoidance. There is conflict in the clarity as I want to embody the parts of him where care is honest and still, I project insecurity onto other people who remind me of him.
[Book of Delights pg. 267 | No. 101 Coco-baby]