“Origin Story,” by Hannah Silverstein (Poetry ’21)

2021 poetry alum Hannah Silverstein was recently featured in the West Trestle Review. Read an excerpt of “Origin Story” below:

Origin Story

At twenty-two, my father
found an egg in his throat,
smooth as a stone.
 
It grew and grew, a bad tenant
nested in the apartment
of his thyroid, and my father
 
said nothing about it.
Those days, my mother
chain-smoked filtered Camels,
 
hiding her sadness under ashtrays
heaped with ruined ends.
They married, legend has it,
 
so he could hand off
the burden of speech
to someone—anyone—else.

Read the rest of this poem here: https://www.westtrestlereview.com/west_trestle_hannah_silverstein.html