What a fine day, he said flicking his tongue
against his teeth extra hard. He had been sitting
like a hard-boiled egg all day, just thinking.
His thoughts pink on hot electric waves wiring
through his hard yellow center, underneath
a still white shell. He was not dingy or dark
nothing cave-like about him, except the occasional
crawling. He felt claustrophobic. This morning,
I do not eat breakfast with my father. I eat three
hard boiled eggs. A bowl of cereal. My spoon
is in my right hand. My napkin is in my lap.
I eat slowly and carefully. I do not spill my milk.
He had grown up barefoot, tempering his crocodile armor
and ate nails for breakfast with 2% milk.
What do Dad’s fists taste like? he would often ask
and often found out, his jaw suddenly growing taste buds.
His mother’s gut was an oven.
My little loaf of bread, she would say poking his soft
center repeatedly poking, until his psyche began growling—
a low gurgling from the tunnels of his intestines,
the sound vibrations so fast transforming into electricity.
I pause eating. I hold one egg in my hand and crush it.
The egg shell pieces looking like the chain mail of a crocodile
and I begin to graph them onto my skin,
listening to my father, as if he were there,
not saying anything. Listening to the sound
of the hot kinetic hardening of my insides.
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