The Beach Is Host to Small Things

Futile, like asking direct sun to be kind to the new of my daughters’

shoulders, the napes of their necks. A nearby woman photographing

her own precious things, their small white feet kicking up the surf.

The man I make love with and my sun-lit girls skitter on the shore,

so much water to be gathered, collected in buckets.

Before the worst hurricane Charleston has ever seen,

my father showed us a kindness. It was to bring us

supplies, then promptly leave before the storm.

If his children were going to die, it wouldn’t be

without flashlights. He was closer than a stranger.

As beautiful as the ocean day is in the morning,

I remind Marcus that morning sun is the worst.

The anxiety the sky reads today is Racially motivated

incident. This sense of foreboding I sit with in predominately

white spaces. How my strained heart pushes past my sternum

to wrap the bright bodies of my loved ones, pull them in.

The stupidest people in the world are police, my granddaddy said.

(In the 70s, my uncle went a few years impersonating

an officer, pulling folks over to write tickets and such.)

The man who chose to father me always told me the world was mine.

Did a crab snap you? Vivienne asks.

Eden jumps over the waves how I did when I was a girl.

I will not tell my daughters to move out of the way

of the walkers on the beach this morning.

I will not hurry to adjust their positions for anyone.

Besides, I was born with a job to record.

Who does the sea belong to—

the man with the beach house on the beach?

Where is the plane and why didn’t it deliver the message?

Is the ocean cold?  I ask Marcus.

Yeah, he says.