My Father’s Hands
by Dave Harris
What I didn’t know was that while I was being
born, I got stuck inside of my mother. The doctor
had to use a cone and a tube to vacuum
me into the world. The pressure from the tool
squeezed my soft head into the shape of a triangle.
In the weeks following my birth, my father
would hold my naked body in the shower
and gently massage the rough corners
of my skull, almost managing to right
the disfigurement. He tells me this story
in a letter he writes twenty-two years after
my mother and her baby fled his home. And now
I understand that the odd head I’ve lived with isn’t
the result of genetics. It’s a wound. How little I knew
of all my father’s hands could do.
born, I got stuck inside of my mother. The doctor
had to use a cone and a tube to vacuum
me into the world. The pressure from the tool
squeezed my soft head into the shape of a triangle.
In the weeks following my birth, my father
would hold my naked body in the shower
and gently massage the rough corners
of my skull, almost managing to right
the disfigurement. He tells me this story
in a letter he writes twenty-two years after
my mother and her baby fled his home. And now
I understand that the odd head I’ve lived with isn’t
the result of genetics. It’s a wound. How little I knew
of all my father’s hands could do.
Dave Harris is a poet and playwright from West Philly. His poetry and essays have been featured or are forthcoming from Up the Staircase Quarterly (nominated "Best of the Net"), BOAAT Press, Rattle, Winter Tangerine, and Black Napkin Press amongst others. He has received fellowships and awards from Callaloo, The American Playwriting Foundation, and UC San Diego. He graduated from Yale University in 2016 and is pursuing his MFA in playwriting at UC San Diego.