The Mid-Atlantic Cradle
After Patrycja Humienik
Rebecca Kirk Connors
I miss you, the rumble of salt water on tossed sand. How the edge of your living
elbows its way towards those million-dollar homes along the dunes. I don’t
care if you surge across them, or eat the mini-golfs and t-shirt shops —
You will always take more than they want you to.
You are primordial life, my miles-deep mystery.
What lives in your absence of light?
How does that darkness mold me?
I am heart-balmed by your constance, whiplashed
by your ferocity. Whitecaps and undertow — your tidal pull brings me
to shore. You are bigger than your hurts, yet I feel them still. This unholy
warmth. In dreams, you appear in the neighborhood I once knew. Froth-bright, you wash
my feet with a chill my bones remember, offer me salt water taffy, sand crabs and sharks.
Tidal Moon
Dayna Patterson
Rebecca Kirk Connors (she/her) is the author of the chapbook, Split Map (Minerva Rising Press, 2019). Her poems can be found in Nixes Mate, Stone Circle Review, and Salamander, among others. She is the co-founder of the virtual literary space, The Notebooks Collective, and received her MFA in poetry from the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program, now at Lasell University. She is happily settled with her family and two cats in a small Massachusetts mill town, where she writes poetry and hangs out with ghosts. Find Rebecca on Instagram and Bluesky.
