Origami of bark and shadow,
I stepped on you barefoot
at my fourth birthday party.
While other kids pinned
the tail on the donkey,
I teetered on the edge
of the kitchen counter
as my father plucked
thorns from soft flesh.
This was decades before
his death but only weeks
before he left. I did not
think of you when I read
Li-Young Lee’s poem about
a father plucking a splinter
from his son’s hand. I have
never thought of tenderness
and my father in the same breath.
