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i used to hate round things my dad telling me make a fist circular & solid punching me to show how hard a closed hand could be made us eggs sunday mornings fried & flat & round he had circle tattoos on his hands that didn’t connect a mistake he called them voice locked & tight
how to heal a broken manhow to close the loophow not to break
my lover laughed at my story said the opposite was true the world works in broken & imperfect circles like arms hugging a baby’s toothless smile the way a dog spins around & around before sleeping the word moon sung by nick drake the soft & rounded edges of the adobe home
my grandmother was born inthe fat & plump sopapillasmy tia makes
one morning my son gathered blue eggs from our new chickens we marvelled at their
warmth feathers still stuck to shell cradling them in the half circles of our palms like precious things
father you are wrongeverything connectsnothing is broken
the best things are what we grow baby to child bud to flower lover to partner what fecundity we create by how we love a friend planted a persimmon tree over her placenta she shared the fruits with me years later while our kids played i taught my children to call the cuts & scrapes they acquired strawberries bloodred & scabbedover look what you grow look how you heal once i planted strawberries with my daughters to teach them some lesson long forgotten this spring i found the plant again tendril wild & weed covered bearing small red berries so angry sweet so intensely alive tasting like leaving & returning like losing something & finding something else like seasons & surviving & harvests & life like life
the world was once whole body
but split apart land mass
spreading open like
broken heart
at a crumbling hostel near montserrat spain
we discovered our double bed
was in fact two singles
pushed together
the seam between us like
faultline
a topography of subtle separation
the tragedy of plate tectonics
when bodies of land
touch the result is always
devastating earth buckling breaking
one side giving way
trying to cuddle at night across the divide
you whispered
perhaps i had understood
only half the theory
perhaps the violence of touching
was also beauty
an act of creation
just look you said
those ridges
those mountains
supplication is a fig tree mid february branches arching upward topped by a pointed green bud that aches to become leaf it’s the gentle way you place baby between bodies sleep those desperately precious few hours during the darkest part of the evening thankful & warm it’s being alone learning what you can do for your one wild body supplication is remembering everything that brought you to where you are slicing a fig open purpled skin & pink fleshy insides tasting the coldness of february during the dying heat of october
i remind myself after i drop the egg that everything i thought important before was wrong the chickens gather madly peck the shell eat the yolk i know this is a bad thing a habit i will have to break but if i could turn feed on what i made i would how to fault them it is instinct
i drink coffee with tia ana looking a decade older since last time more tired i used to interrupt her stories for details taking notes to get it straight now i just listen & laugh at tio piggy who may or may not have eaten a grasshopper my father who may or may not have started that fight i ask no questions trusting the body’s memory it is always a risk
i find myself alone grey berkeley mornings no rush to get kids to school no breakfast to make but coffee & this ache that things used to have such urgency such consequence a spilled bowl of cereal a forgotten chore but none of that remains
i hope one day to nourish myself on the things i left behind all this longing the body
knows it’s instinct it’s bad habits it’s stories that don’t always add up it’s realizing they don’t have to
son you made me cocky
the arrogance to carry you
at 21
strapped to my chest
ajax with shield
on public busses to & from
school
i imagined myself babyholding warrior
fearing that to the young
men & women
riding next to me i was
anomaly & sacrilege
& ugly
but truth is
nothing was more lovely than
your fat legs dangling
down & never shoed
when reproached by old ladies
holding plasticbags & gaptoothed smiles
to keep your feet warm
i nodded yes
but whispered to you
don’t worry
we run hot
& together
we are weapon
Tomas Moniz is editor of two anthologies on radical parenting Rad Dad & Rad Families: A Celebration. His novella Bellies and Buffalos is a tender, chaotic road trip about friendship, family and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. He’s the recipient of the SF Literary Arts Foundation's 2016 Mary Tanenbaum Award and founder of two literary reading series. He’s been making zines since the late nineties, and his most current zine tendril wild is available, but you have to write him a postcard: PO Box 3555, Berkeley CA 94703. He promises to write back.
This originally appeared on August 10, 2017