Growth, rising like birdsong, like ancient rituals, like stage curtains.
Untethered from context, some bodies are between adjectives unless
laid out bare. Rejection in spite of fleshy reminders. My father as metaphor,
in an academic sense, as “unconscious presumption.” A lifelong gardener,
he showed me to measure soil with finger folds, to bury seeds in time
for their opening acts. Little to say to each other. After bathing, I stare
at myself through clouded glass, trace the outline of muscular shoulders,
the wide brim of my hips, the mannish forearms. The sort of fetter imposed
on daughters of quiet fathers, this figure of practicality, of usefulness, he’d say.
As a child, I had no older siblings; as a child, I received his used clothes,
slept in large cotton tees. Matter-of-fact. When the flowers never sprouted
we assumed the seeds had fallen to the wind. The next spring, we found
they had grown the other way, as if chasing the earth core, as if forsaking the sun,
as if lusting for refuge. My father, rubbing his forehead, brows furrowed. Me,
trowel in hand, pulling the plants by the bottom of their stems, a resemblance
at best. The petals, covered in dirt, hardly describable. Even them, oddly queer.
–
Noelle Hendrickson is a senior at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. She recently served as Editor-in-Chief of UVU’s literary magazine Touchstones. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Allegheny Review, The Albion Review, Watershed Review, and on Lesbianherstory.com.