Our father used to own a donut shop. Every morning, he would wake up to yearning dough. Did you make old-fashioneds or Long Johns, we ask. He doesn’t understand the question. Everything went into the golden oil bath. They floated up to the top like champagne bubbles. He did this every day for ten years. He hated that job, he tells us. It left burn marks on his fingertips. He didn’t learn a thing from it. But we know differently. He makes everything with holes now. Pasta. Shirts. Bedtime stories. We look down at our bellies. Empty in the middle.
@michaelshillingburg