In Protection of the Daughter

By Veronica Silva

Every morning I slip her into the lint trap like a dollar. I run the dryer and she emerges freshly daughtered, ironed and swaddled in fuzz. Her body a puff of steel wool, she scrubs the grout between tiles. In her layers of lint, she can clear the sink without the shrivel of dish daughter. Before bed, I pick the stuffing from her nose and armpits, lick static from her hair with dryer sheets or it floats up—threatened by the yank of a hand unseen.

At the store for more dryer sheets, I see someone slide their hand in an O down some other daughter’s ponytail. I know the next part of the joke—he loops it around her neck like a rope. I was a daughter, too, when I learned daughters are always at the hazard of augers. You understand—a lamb to the daughter. Imagine me at that age—my relief when someone approached the opposite side of the doorframe. The knock faltered and then fell away. Nothing more than a warning, a refusal of blame. Turns out blood is thicker than daughters. 

At home, I toss her in the drum and decide to increase our routine to twice a day. Sometimes I start the machine but her eyes wobble like egg yolks at me. In one ear and out the daughter, they say. Often she hums like a stray sock, a tissue forgotten in a pocket. Other days sound more like a thunk, a heavy rug, a gum sole shoe. I hadn’t yet realized that I was hiding her from me, too.

It happens on one of the heavier days. The hot air sucks her through the aluminum chute, en route to some other one-bedroom apartment. The tube split in a poof of gray fuzz in my face. Hard to say whether it was an accident or an escape. 

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About Veronica Silva

Silva is the recipient of a Provost Fellowship from the University of Central Florida, where

she is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in

PANK Magazine, The Acentos Review, The Blood Pudding, Passages North, Pleiades, and others. Her

poem “Etymology of Latin-American Nursery Rhymes” was recently nominated for Best of the Net

2022 by the editors at Hayden's Ferry Review. Veronica is currently based in Orlando, Florida.