Testing the Seams

I think of the Hulk, that bulging creature
outlined on my son’s green T-shirt.
It barely fits him anymore,
now that his father’s body asserts itself in him,
widening the plain between his shoulder blades,
fleshing out his thighs. What pulkas,
my mother would say were she here to pinch them.
His legs are suddenly log-solid.
Their stance, a man to be reckoned with.
Understand, there was a man I learned
I couldn’t live with, who couldn’t live with me.
Yet here he is, testing the seams of my son’s clothing,
refusing to keep to the confines of my past.