The first time fishing with my father,
sticking the worm through, he told me
not to worry. That the slender body I pinched
and squashed a bit in my hands
had many hearts.
As if the anatomy of its beating
could have made it easier
to cast the line. Oh no
I remember thinking, it has begun
its dying already. I felt as though
I were undoing years of my careful tread after hard rain,
to avoid them as they came to light
up onto the surface, so much light,
all that flesh, pruned, transparent
and writhing on the earth now. Was this ever
my responsibility, to know
the exact moment this very larva began
its death? So I cast my line clumsily and waited
in the early morning rivermists.
Remembering this now, it seems almost
ludicrous—my father’s mud-sunk, bloody, killing hands instead of
those fingers passing me books or pens or turning to handle his
guitar, its luminous strings, rubbing my
aching back. It feels as if
it were another person’s life, another person’s
father. I think, now, that perhaps
it was, and is, and I am just
lonely and surrounded. Then, I think the river
and the fish and the pulsing water and all the things
I misremember make me just
eternal. I’m passing through. Like a body
split apart into millions of particles and moments and
memory spread and dampening the ends of a small boy’s
shorts, up to his chin, into his mouth.
How else could I remember wiping
the sweat from my small brow,
trying to steady the thing
by its ends, wanting to give it back
to its home, to release the liquid
ray in water and wriggle down
to the earth, even as again now I fold its body
like fabric and pierce at least two
of its thousand hearts?

Darius Atefat-Peckham is an Iranian-American poet and essayist. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, Texas Review, Zone 3, Nimrod, Brevity, Crab Orchard Review, The Southampton Review and elsewhere. In 2018, Atefat-Peckham was selected by the Library of Congress as a National Student Poet, the nation’s highest honor presented to youth poets writing original work. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora (University of Texas Press). Atefat-Peckham currently studies Creative Writing at Harvard College.