Angela Once Said
That Parenting is Immersive

We are paddling in a splash of children when Sarah
holds up a wet stone, it’s the shape of a breast: symbol
of my parenting life she says. The sphere was the tint
and opacity of cold, stewed tea: the thing was tannin
strong. It’s not hot-swollen nor punctured flat but the size
of a small, clenched fist, perfectly hard and round except
drawn to a neat bifurcated pout. It’s even got a cracked
nipple, I point out. In the cliff car park by the gritty
toilets with no mirrors, on a What did you find today?
ID board, a mammoth tooth, anemone fossil and there,
unmistakable, her stone, named as cannon shot flint—
a cup of boiling quartz cooled to indestructible grace.