Tiny Parent v.1
Alt-text:
Early on you will get your parenting wrong and you may turn into your child—a creature not fully
possessed of words perhaps, a fragile being receiving you mainly through heartbeats and touch, your
expressions and heat—you may turn to your child to ask for forgiveness. You’ll say please forgive me and
you will be unsure who is speaking and who is spoken to because time will bend in upon itself. You
will be a parent seeking forgiveness and a child from years ago wanting and wanting for your someone
to say I’m sorry I did that to you. Like this one time when I was eight and my daughter was three, and we
were, both of us, afraid of our fathers. And I looked down upon her and through her terrified eyes
back at her father, mine. As I formed my mouth to speak, I found nothing but error. We did not want
some of what we were given; we wanted things we did not receive. We give what we were given; we
give what we wanted. Maybe we need our way toward better. Right there, in the room of tiny parents
and tiny children, right there I surrendered to a long-held desire previously unnamed, and what I
desired was this: something different for us.
About the author
Michael Kleber-Diggs is a poet, essayist, and literary critic. His debut poetry collection, Worldly Things, won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and was published by Milkweed Editions in 2021. Michael’s writing appears or is forthcoming in Sleet Magazine, Poem-a-Day, Poetry Northwest, Potomac Review, Hunger Mountain, Memorious, Rain Taxi, and a few anthologies. Michael is a past Fellow with the Givens Foundation for African American Literature and a past-winner of the Loft Mentor Series in Poetry. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. It has also been supported by the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Jerome Foundation. Michael is married to Karen Kleber-Diggs. Karen and Michael have a daughter who is pursuing a B.F.A. in Dance Performance at SUNY Purchase.