Talking to my father about the girl he did not get

This is the way it is supposed to be done: she asks for piggyback rides,
he permits extra scoops of ice cream, they carve jack-o-lanterns together.
At night,  after they have made dessert in her Easy Bake oven,
she pretends to be asleep so that he will have to lift and carry her 
to her brass bed;  she smells the white collar smoke, the cigarette sweat. 
They are intoxicating. These are more than trite cliches: 
Daddy’s girl, crinoline, the walk down the aisle.  They are icons, 
cemented the first time she dances on her father’s footsteps.
Her toes bare, his wing-tipped.  Not even Mercury could bear a more clear
message:  I am your one true god.  Worship me.  Hold me tight.

But I did not want to be Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,
I never begged for a horse, Malibu Barbie, or an extended curfew. 
I only wanted one thing: for my father to notice the way I could
make the ball slip through the hoop.  Shimmy through the net.
Sometimes I would count, their bedroom above the court: 

sixteen, seventeen, eighteen in a row.  But he never turned on the porch light. 
Never requested to join me.  My fingers cold, cut; my cheeks  burning. 
I know I kept him awake.  Not because of the noise.  I’m sure
it was because he was inside dreaming himself another girl:
one with soft, pink hands.  Ponytails.  Lip gloss in her purse.