"My" daughter. "My" apartment. "My" chair. "My" cat. "My" car. "My" signifies a uniqueness of relationship. A pointer. Exclusiveness, but not complete exclusiveness. At work I sit in "my chair", but it is really the chair of the place I work for. I say "my" daughter, but she is her own person, and she is also her step-father's daughter.

"Mine" is instinctive. Birds know "mine". They warble it in the trees outside "my" apartment. "My nest" they sing. "My territory". "My" cat knew it when he chased the neighbor's cat off the property. "My" dog knew it when she would growl at anyone other than family who came near "her" food dish.

"My" daughter knew "my" at the age of two. "Mine", she said as I tried to take a cup away from her. In "The Dispossessed", Ursula K. LeGuin wrote about a communist society where they tried to keep "mine" from people's vocabulary. We are not blank slates though, and "mine" is there inside us automatically. Her character could not escape it. And I don't think any of us can or should.

"My" head. "My" love. "My" city.

"My" readers are of course entitled to "their own" opinions.