Honorable Mention for the 2021 Small Orange Emerging Woman Poet Honor

What Was YOUR IDEA OF TENDERNESS WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD?

There is a yellow-eyed warthog sitting at your kitchen table. He wears round metal glasses and a tight orange vest. He is trying to show you that he can be good.

You press the back of your palm to the warthog's black snout. It leaves behind a stain, which smells like the oil your mother once massaged into your knees when you felt pain. He rubs a tusk against your cheek, against your elbow and your mouth. You feel like the soup he is trying to ladle. If you give me a hug, he says, you will not disappear when you die. You'll move on.

You ask about the hug. You ask about what it will feel like. He looks down at the deep grooves etched in his hooves. He does not have to cry for you to look at him, and know.

Erika is a poet and co-founding editor of A Velvet Giant, a genreless literary journal. Her work has been featured in Brooklyn Poets, Booth, Hobart, Hotel Amerika, Visible Poetry Project, Peach Mag, and elsewhere. An alumna of the artist residency program at Art Farm Nebraska, she works as an editorial assistant and lives in Brooklyn with her pet cat Willa.