Our Fathers Give Birth to Themselves

 

I am eight and riding the bus with my dad, and he tells a man

across the aisle to stop doing whatever it is that he’s doing,

and the other man starts to swing at my father, who says something

in the man’s ear that makes him lower his hand and get off

at the next stop. “What did you say to him?” I ask,

but my father just shakes his head,