by Sorren Briarwood
a story we still tell:
you, pregnant, craving, sent my father to Nando’s with clear instructions: bring back a whole chicken.
he, suspecting hyperbole, familiar with how you pecked at your food (“you eat like a bird,” people would later say the same thing about me) came back with half a chicken.
to share.
you (understandably) furious.
you sent him back for the other half.
a song you sang to me to make me laugh:
chick-chick-chick-chick-chicken
lay a little egg for me
chick-chick-chick-chick-chicken
I want one for my tea…
an old wives’ tale:
only set the roundest eggs.
the squarer ones will hatch as roosters.
a list of questions I cannot ask you now:
• who sang you that song? (certainly not your mother, who barely spoke english.)
• surely you didn’t hear it in tanzania?
•what is chicken in swahili?
•what about in gujarati?
• why did you call me chicken? (your parents wouldn’t have called you that either.)
another story I still tell:
I kicked so much, little talons digging into your eggshell insides, that you were sure I would be a boy.
how you cried and cried when the doctors told you you were wrong. not because there was anything wrong with a girl, you said, but because you felt like you’d lost your son.
a story I try not to tell:
how you cried and cried when I told you you were right.
Sorren Briarwood is a lover of storytelling in all its forms, and hopes to write in as many mediums as he can before he is a skeleton (or for longer, provided he can find a way to hold a pen without muscles.) Find his work at sorrenbriarwood.com.