Sonia Greenfield
—
On Skaket Beach, Cape Cod
At the water’s edge, my son daydreams on the shore
between watching women’s bodies glisten, studded
with bright points of silicate, and making castles
from wet sand. My husband feeds me a burger,
iconic in its silver wrapper, and it tastes like ketchup
and teen desire—all my life strung along from beach
to beach like anchoring nodes. Like a stick prodding
a marooned jellyfish, I poke at the ones with my mother
to feel her absence again. In the heart of each node,
she is there on a lounge chair in a floppy hat, her eyes
watching the horizon gazing back, just two enigmas
in a staring contest. I lurk in the circle of shade
from my umbrella, and it arcs like the shadow hand
of a sundial telling me the time as I try to avoid a tan.
We’ve come to this new memory being made
for another act in a long play about saying goodbye,
and the memory is wrought in blue, green and ecru.
I gaze up at mud flats where tourists with little nets
churn clouds into pools. I gaze up and find the tips
of witchgrass swishing in baby waves. I gaze up
and the water’s already lapping at my toes. I can’t
stop the tide from coming in.
Sonia Greenfield (she/they) is the author of Helen of Troy is High AF(Harbor Editions), All Possible Histories(Riot In Your Throat), Letdown (White Pine Press), and Boy with a Halo at the Farmer's Market (Codhill Press). A 2024 McKnight Writing Fellow, her writing has appeared in the 2018 and 2010 Best American Poetry, The Southern Review, Copper Nickel, diode, and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Minneapolis where she teaches at Normandale College, edits the Rise Up Review, and advocates for neurodiversity and the decentering of the cis/het white hegemony. More at soniagreenfield.com
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