Grace Notes
Sheryl White Bent and young-backed, we turned seaweed-baked stones on their heads. The water breathed. What we desired hid in shards of fog blue and aqua, miming tide pool mosaics. Silent, knees biting the rocks, we grasped sea glass. A boy came on foot, sat by the road, his lips cupped over the silvery mouth of a flute. Its clean voice washed the air, not more than birdsong, but liquid in the wind, like winged fins above our bowed heads. We were muted, and he played. Something stirred in the beach roses. Suns circled, quiet and whole. We clung to the salt air, turned and fisted our sharp find in our hands. After Life Oranges crowd a basket, fresh, untouched. Last week’s gone out to loam, finished, blackened, discarded. Inside a small fan blurs, a freezer sweats, in another room someone dials the phone, and a clock-- electric, clicking, wheezing—stops at each second. Unused, the kettle shines. The last, week-scarred lily, left like a last kiss, releases a sigh of petals. One door opens, closes, close. Shoes whisper across polished floors. Still air silts into the corner, under a chair a small knot of dust settles. |
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About the Author: Sheryl White is an artist and writer living in Boston. Her writing has been published in Ibbetson Street Press, Blast Furnace, Solstice Literary Journal, Poetry Quarterly, Halfway Down the Stairs, and The Boston Globe, and is upcoming in Split Rock Review. In 2016, she received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Poetry Finalist Grant and was selected for a Mayor of Boston Poetry Program award.