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Knuckle<\/strong><\/p>\n In front of the hyena enclosure I want to hold your hand. I don\u2019t care about your other family watching. I stand alongside, stoop slightly to your eight year old height so the back of my hand contacts yours. I can\u2019t do the rest though. I can\u2019t reach my fingers to curl around yours. It\u2019s no more than a brush of our knuckles.<\/p>\n A battered looking creature lazes at the back of the cage, one eye on us.<\/p>\n \u201cWill you call me Dad?\u201d I say instead, and then regret it, immediately. Too much too soon. I nearly call you princess. I\u2019m relieved I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n You move away without returning my look, enough so our hands aren\u2019t touching.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just – \u201d I say.<\/p>\n Your face is reflected in the glass. You aren\u2019t looking at the animals. I don\u2019t know what you\u2019re looking at, but I can tell it isn\u2019t them, the way your eyes are focused. Is that a good thing? Does it mean you\u2019re thinking about what I said?<\/p>\n \u201cLast time I saw you, you were this big. Couldn\u2019t walk, talk, nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n I can feel your parents looking at us. Your do-the-right-thing adopted parents who decide when you\u2019re ready to write to me, who decide when you\u2019re ready to hear from me, who decide when you\u2019re ready to call me whatever, who decide how much it matters that you meet me but on their terms, always on their terms.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s weird I know,\u201d I say, \u201cthis.\u201d<\/p>\n I crouch so you\u2019re taller than me, then force a short laugh so they\u2019ll think we\u2019re getting along just fine, but feel an idiot afterwards because you don\u2019t react. But it\u2019s what they want to see. Completeness. Your story coming full circle. You coming to an understanding with big bad birth dad, the big bad wolf they told you could never look out for you. For you to look at my face and see something of yourself, to acknowledge that, then move on, say you\u2019ve done that. Done me. I know how that works I think. I know they think this is a one off. But.<\/p>\n I try to see what you\u2019re looking at, your eyes angled away and down. Undergrowth in the enclosure, from what I can tell. Tangle. You haven\u2019t looked at my face at all. You only looked at my right hand when we first met, the one I brushed against yours just now. Knuckles tattooed. K. A. T. E.<\/p>\n I want to say I\u2019ve changed, but I doubt that would mean anything to you. Would they ever tell you what happened back then? Would you be standing so close if they did?<\/p>\n \u201cI used to hold hands with your Mum all the time,\u201d I say. \u201cBefore, I mean.\u201d<\/p>\n You half turn to look at your parents behind us and I wonder if you\u2019re confused for a moment, thinking I mean that Mum.<\/p>\n \u201cYou look just like her.\u201d<\/p>\n I say that, but really I want you to turn to me, see my face and think to yourself you look just like me.<\/p>\n The inked skin of my knuckle still tingles from our touch. As far as it goes. No further. They\u2019ll be over in a minute, your other parents, calling time.<\/p>\n The hyena at the back, its one eye never leaving us, bares its teeth to grin.<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Martin Reed<\/strong> is a London based writer and editor. By day, he pays the bills writing about homelessness. By night he makes things up. His short fiction has appeared in more than 20 publications, including Critical Quarterly, Litro <\/em>and Ink Sweat and Tears<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Knuckle In front of the hyena enclosure I want to hold your hand. I don\u2019t care about your other family watching. I stand alongside, stoop slightly to your eight year old height so the back of my hand contacts yours. I can\u2019t do the rest though. I can\u2019t reach my fingers to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7537,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7536\/revisions\/7537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}