I remember Bethany Beach, Delaware,
me, a child, digging up sand crabs the afternoon long,
as the cranky surf churned up the overflowing bottom,
so full of food for conks, crabs, gulls, more…
incredulous, I thought, “my, what it took to get me here.”
All the places I have ever belonged are burning, drowning, or both.
Oh family – grandma, grandpa, mama, sand crabs, conks…
where do I even start? In Syria? Or perhaps Ireland?
Or do we begin again every place we go?
The seeds sprung from the dirt of Ellis Island,
the moment grandma and grandpa began to weave
their way like ivy towards each other.
Or maybe we begin everywhere and nowhere,
like string lights zigzagging over the garden
until we are spooled in by the gardener to each other,
into a shared state, in our case the Ocean State.
Grandma, grandpa on down, their memory like so many others
infuse the waves off Second Beach, Middletown, Rhode Island.
I still visit each August, spread the sand all woozy over my feet,
each grain a plot point in someone’s story –
a birth, a death, a breaking apart, a joining together,
or just a shared meal, a joke or two –
that the ocean keeps depositing here, microscopic fragments
of every family that ever decided “we are leaving.”
So with my small existence being some consequence,
I ask, “where do I go from here?” I am running
through Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC.
I moved here from Oakland, California, where according to the weather
is already 90o by 9am – so where do I go?
Grandma still haunts my laughter,
like from that time a man asked about the hammer
adorning grandpa’s coffin, and she quipped through tears,
“if you can’t get into heaven, you gotta knock down the gate.”
I never think the Earth will betray me,
but I am leaving her no choice.
Despite finding home in every corner –
ripples of sand whether desert or beach,
looming forests whether chestnut or redwood –
despite harvesting sweet grapevine leaves curling over arbors,
rolling them with ground lamb and rice as we always did –
tradition guarantees nothing. That I still carry it –
faces in grainy black and white by a gentle sea –
only uproots the heart, casts it off.
So, I ask again (and again), with the simmering heat of summer
the likes of which only my hometown of Baltimore, Maryland
can know… where am I now –
where can I be –
where do I go from here –
—
Emily Knight serves as senior manager for the Lenfest Ocean Program, a grant-making program with the Pew Charitable Trusts that invests in scientific research to address the needs of ocean and coastal managers and policymakers. She holds an MS in Oceanography from the University of Maine and is currently a student in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Her most recent publication appeared in Thimble Literary Magazine.
