Today’s WordPress Daily Post Prompt is Opening Lines: What’s the first line of the last song you listened to (on the radio, on your music player, or anywhere else)? Use it as the first sentence of your post.

I’m going to cheat a bit. The first few lines in this song by Carly Simon remind me of the protagonist in my Work in Progress, of Beryl, and the strained relationship she has with her father.

~ o ~

My father sits at night with no lights on. Not unlike the resentment smoldering within him, his cigarette glows in the dark. I know just the sight of me will stir that anger from its sleep. Yet, the living room is still; I walk by, no remark. 

One day I’ll face him, ask him why he reserves his anger for me. But not today. I’m not up to the battle, not up to facing the darkness in him because it calls to the darkness in me, making me want to hurt him the way he has hurt me. The way he hurt my mother when she was alive. I’m not sure how  my brother Jeryl is exempt, has always been exempt, but he is. My father dotes on him as if he where the prodigal son returned. In my father’s eyes, I am Cain, and Jeryl is Abel. Jeryl says it’s because he doesn’t fight back. He accepts it and buries it.

I can not be like Jeryl. My anger is alive, burning inside me. I guess that makes me my father’s daughter.

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