{"id":44,"date":"2021-02-07T17:49:57","date_gmt":"2021-02-07T17:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/?p=44"},"modified":"2025-03-16T11:12:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-16T15:12:18","slug":"little-nugget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/?p=44","title":{"rendered":"little nugget"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
little nugget is
what she called
some prospective
offspring
swaddled in
lush affection.

i daydream on
the words.
little<\/em>
nugget<\/em>
some minuscule
oblong shape
that reshapes
the future.

not mine,
of course.
or mine only
by a degree
removed.
or two, really.
grand<\/em>
mother<\/em>
i've never
been either,
of course.

\u2026but to hold that
little nugget<\/em>
in my arms
(do they sleep?)
safe and secure
(if it squirms
i'll return it
to its mother)
the product of
my dearest boy\u2026

a father
a dad

a stranger who
lived at home
sometimes, who
crushed the breath
from me, who
ridiculed me,
mocked me,
slapped me,
threw me into
a corner of the
kitchen, laughing
(he wouldn't
remember) because
i couldn't fight back.
i didn't fight back.
i don't fight
a father
a dad

the unexamined assumptions
of third-wave feminism
plated my abraded
flesh at fixed points
\"Men don't want to be fathers.\"
my armor in perpetuity
over scars of
rejection
abandonment
dislocation
the primal fear of
being exposed
helpless
devoured by wolves.

thirty years later
bright eyes met
across the gap of
a generation
(he could have been
my son) and i can
no longer retreat
unchallenged
to the cave of
intellectual
authority and
sacrosanct belief.

a man
emotionally invested in
a fetus
unborn, aborted.

he could have been--
he still wants
to be.

words would have left
me unpierced, dull darts
against an armored
heart. but in the
depths of those eyes,
in those unfiltered
pools of honesty, i saw
reflected the
broken bud of
grief.

maybe he loved me once,
i'll never know. a man's
world is encumbered by
a silence he bears to
the grave, his eyes
creased by a folded
bruise of unspoken
loss, a wound trodden
upon by careless wives,
daughters, girlfriends,
partners, an unblotted
stigmata that blooms
through my own life,
weaving father to son,
son to brother,
brother to friend.

i understand, for one
brief moment, the shadow
cast by female privilege
over long years of unhappy
womanhood. i want to
say 'i'm sorry' but find
i cannot forgive.

i meditate instead
upon the words
little<\/em>
nugget<\/em>
and imagine some
minuscule oblong
shape that reshapes
the past.

(maybe he loved me,
once.)<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
February 5, 2021<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
little nugget iswhat she calledsome prospectiveoffspringswaddled inlush affection.i daydream onthe…<\/p>\n
Continue Readinglittle nugget<\/span> <\/i><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6,2],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-6","tag-poetry","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}