She stood on Omaha Beach, letting the ocean lick her leather boots. On the hilltop, men in windbreakers searched for their fathers, their brothers. They collected names like shells. The girl, though, stayed down on the beach – her family wasn’t up there. Mostly, they were on a small plot outside Knob Creek Church of Christ. She wondered, if she could uncurve the world, if she could see straight to Knob Creek, to the twenty-person congregation, to the collection plate she dropped a dollar bill in each Sunday morning. Salt and loneliness prickled on her tongue.
Shelby Dale DeWeese is a poetry editor for both Fractal and Teen Ink. Originally from a town on the Kentucky/Tennessee state line with no name, she currently lives and studies in a city with quite a long one – El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reyna de Los Angeles de Porciúncula