For ‘Marie Claire’s Makers issue, author and poet Leila Mottley pens an evocative piece of short fiction.
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ForMarie Claire’sMakers Issue, author and poet Leila Mottley writes about the power of the ocean.
Mottley’s debut poetry collection,woke up no light,hits shelves April 16.
The Pacific waves keep rolling.
Foam of the mouth, thunder, split up a child from her mother.
This is what geography does.
A salt history, a global Great Migration we are all still too terrified to be in awe of.
I don’t like the ocean, but I love the water.
I like quiet with a drip drip and no movement.
Stay where I grew up, on my back door step.
This family has moved too much.
The West coast knows a different kind of blue.
Looks warm, but is a messenger for purple toes and frozen wishes.
I was always too afraid to put my feet in, until this day.
Sunday loving, I am beckoned to the shore of everything.
I look across my ocean and think of landlocked Tennessee, Kentucky.
A South Carolina port, a Detroit fleeing.
I think of my great-grandfathers straight-from-Haiti growl.
I breathe the ocean.
For all the steps we’ve taken, the land hot beneath our feet as we march.
For all the tongues we’ve wielded from our ties.
The waves are hungry.
Mottley is the author ofNightcrawling,aNew York Timesbest seller.
She was also the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate.
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