It was in the knuckles of my father, thick as ginger roots
and scarred by the lathe, learning how to peel a peach for me
without bruising the golden give of the fruit. He held the blade
—not as a weapon, but as a quiet extension of a subtle hand that
parts the outer layer without harming the inner life.

On Saturday nights, he’d sit beneath the moonlight with a bowl
of warm water and a bar of grit-soap, scrubbing the garage grease
off his pores until his palms were pink and smelling of lemons.
He would reach for my sister’s tangled hair—his touch a slow,
improbable miracle—fingers that could torque a bolt to its limit
now moving like a tender breeze through silk, untouchable and soft.

I learned it then: that the world is hard, but our hands do not
have to be. He taught me that the strongest spine is the one that
knows when to bend, and that love is often found in the small
and sugared geometries—the way he’d halve a strawberry and
give me the side with the green crown, his rough thumb wiping
a stray drop of juice from my chin.

 

 

 

 

Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash