“The Shore of the Turquoise Sea,” oil on canvas, by Albert Bierstadt, 1878.
On the night we met, my father gave me Icarus
and a latte. I was made of questions and wore
my mother’s face, ten years older than she’d
been when he saw her last, the day he’d told her
he was going to marry someone else. The legend
goes that on the day he held my newborn body,
I cried until he handed me back to my mom, as if
somehow I already knew. But on the last night
of my twenties, I met my father at a coffee shop,
and he gave me a birthday present for the first
time. Icarus was made of repurposed steel. He
glowed copper-green in the café light. My father
made him from four steel pieces that curve up
like a double helix from a flat Earth base, metal
wings spread wide near the top beside a silver
sun. I don’t remember any words my father said
that night. Now I often think of him—Icarus—
on early mornings when I walk at the beach
and watch the surfers glide across the waves,
shining in black suits. It’s that last moment, body
and board tossed into the sky, sudden flight—
and then—wings askew, legs last to disappear.
He’s gone again. This morning though, I noticed
one surfer with longer hair and curves, the only
body in the water that looked at all like mine.
I watched for the final flight, the fall, but no—
she outrode the wave, stepped into the shallows,
and walked away.
Katie Manning is the founding editor of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. Winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award for Tasty Other, she’s the author of eight poetry collections, most recently Hereverent (Agape Editions, 2023) and How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press, 2022). Her writing has been featured on Poetry Unbound, Tangle News, Verse Daily, and many other venues. Find her online at katiemanningpoet.com.
