Twice a week my father calls me up on the phone and says
that whenever he’s lonely, he thinks about the heart of a blue whale,
how it can fit so many other hearts inside it, like Russian Matryoshka
nesting dolls. I regret fucking so many women, he tells me.
Miles of static stretching between us, my cat arching her back
against the fence post outside, the hospital bracelet taped
over a corner of the calendar on my fridge, that reminder
of all the moments I was not the girl he and my mother wanted,
the problem child, rotten nectarine in a carton
of unblemished peaches.
And I wonder if he ever regretted making love to her
in the backseat of the car that one night, the night of my conception-
thighs over thighs, knees pressed to spines, a pretzel of human limbs,
the tiny light already beginning to glow inside her stomach.
That luminous knot of life, the fishing hook
that sunk into deep waters over and over again,
the one that reached down beneath the surface, bubbles streaming
in its wake like pearls, and lifted me up,
clean as an approaching hurricane.
