“Three Meditations on Fatherhood” by Tyler Chadwick

I. Two Kitchen Floors and a Tea Party

1.
Scrubbing the kitchen floor
on my hands and knees:

Dad walked in, looked down, said,
You’ll make someone a good wife

someday, then grinned. I shook my head,
laughed back, returned to searching

for my reflection
in linoleum.

2.
Six-month daughter strapped to my chest,
three-year-old downstairs

in front of Sesame Street: I mopped
the kitchen floor, watching crumpets

rise in the oven because
she was playing tea party and I thought

for once
we should try them for real.

II. At the Grocery Store on a Midweek Afternoon

My cart loaded, infant and toddler in tow,
I stepped to the check-out stand. You playing Mom
today? the cashier asked. Looking up then down,
I wanted to strip myself, say, Did I wear my wife’s
breasts today? Slip on her episiotomy
with my underwear, her labor-wide hips
with my jeans? No wonder nothing fits. I must have
missed the mirror on our way out the door. Instead,
while unloading groceries on the conveyor belt, I
patronized her smile with mine and told her,
Something like that, though it was really nothing like that
(Dragoti’s Jack Butler got my arc wrong); then waited
for the price, paid, reloaded the cart, and gathered my girls
into the flaming circle of our mundanity.