To My Daughter, After a Fight

Raising you I hold
my character up to the light.
Check the watermark —
cheap paper, plain and coarse.

How to teach you virtues
I don’t always possess?
The future branches,
a puzzle tree, impossible to climb.

Forgive me: my shouted words
mattered more than the medium.
Before you write your own page,
I ask you to consider mine.