Fleeing for My Life
A South Carolina poet on how we leave a special place—but it never leaves us.
I still taste the sea,
in these flat sandy plains of South Carolina.
No mountains to tempt me,
but leagues of sugar sand in every direction,
leagues of sand, still plotting the sea.
I look back as I please.
I’d rather not know what’s ahead,
breaking the knuckles on a pile of crab legs.
Even my daughters came into this world,
thanks to the sea within me.
Oh, how I’d rather look back—
as I slurp and squeeze the salty joints
of this poem, with its bones
on the outside, smelling of the sea.
Julia Wendell’s sixth collection of poems, The Art of Falling, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2022. Another collection, Daughter Days, will be published by Unsolicited Press in 2025. She is Founding Editor of Galileo Press, lives in Aiken, South Carolina, and is an equestrian three-day event rider.