Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Headwind
~Amber Flora Thomas

Weak motion of grasses and tern before the sea.
Worry’s school cresting here and everywhere
as failings.

I pace the cliff path, my hands cupped above my eyes.
The glare steals your progress, a kayak needling
the wide open.

Love means you answer, this the child’s rebuke.
A pattern crosses the point, hemming
the horizon: steamship.

I didn’t know you were the green pitch
unable to beat the storm to shore.
You didn’t know I was the lookout.

Get accustomed to the sad girl picking you
out of the sea, the knot caught in her throat,
and the unraveling of her speech: an endless rope
thrown out of me.