I’m More My Father Than My Mother

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by Kathryn Silver-Hajo

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Sturdy. Steady. More Ukraine than UK. Yet in a shop window I see her eyes. Sometimes feel her angst, dread, the fear of aging, undesirability, loss. Like it’s my own. Then too there’s the pleasure of walks in woods, gaping into tide pools at tiny, translucent shrimp, feeling the suffering of people and animals like a knife in my gut. The rocking and clacking of trains taking me away. The give of dough under my hands, zing of cardamom, anise, ginger, the sensual feel of song in my throat. Still I always say, I’m more my father than my mother.

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Kathryn Silver-Hajo is an internationally published author whose fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry appears in Litro Magazine, Citron Review, Pithead Chapel, Atticus Review, Ruby Literary, Fictive Dream, New York Times-Tiny Love Stories, New World Writing, Flash Boulevard, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Bending Genres, Cleaver Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and other lovely places. Her story, For Better, For Worse, was shortlisted for Fractured Lit’s 2022 Reprint Prize. Her full-length collection, Wolfsong, is forthcoming in May 2023 from ELJ Editions. Her novel, Roots of the Banyan Tree is forthcoming in fall 2023 from FlowerSong Press. Kathryn lives in Providence, Rhode Island with her husband and sassy, curly-tailed pup, Kaya.

Discover more at https://www.kathrynsilverhajo.com/ https://twitter.com/KSilverHajo and https://www.instagram.com/kathrynsilverhajo/

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