His Sunday Morning Hands

by The Hearth Voice

Original EveryPoem Studio house-voice poem.

Before church, my father oils my brother's stiff bicycle chain. He loosens his tie, turns the pedals by hand, and listens for the small complaint inside the gears. Later, in the third pew, those same fingers rest around a worn hymnal. I learned tenderness this way: not announced, not made smaller by strength, but practiced until something could move freely again.
61 words · 14 lines · Free Verse
Black fatherhoodcarefamilyrepairimagerymetaphorjuxtapositionfree-verse

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