Fun fact: the name Zachary is from Zachariah which means the Lord remembers.
Note: This is my first husband’s real first name and I never took his. He is remarried to another woman, has children with her, and makes no attempt to have a relationship with his children. As you read this work, with this backstory, it will make more sense.
He left us on
Constructed wings
Of wax to wain
Leaving us to watch
To see
the sea
Welcome him.
There is no love lost
When the man you loved
No longer exists—
If he ever had.
The name
The Lord remembers
Corresponds to
The same Icarus
Who left me with
The daughters
Held in body
And heart.
The same one
Who now has
Made his tribe
Complete with the
Sons be craved
So that his line
And its curses
Might not die
With him.
Tied to you by time
As my ancestors were
The language and land
Foreign because I
Never was supposed
To be here alone.
To rage, rage against the
Dying of the light!
I swallowed the salt water
For my children to breathe.
Pressing –
Swimming –
Towards the Son
With the
These two
Cleaving to me
To make their
Mother a mermaid
to bring them to
Dry land
To make the milk and honey.
My fins are feet
and feet are fins
The traversing between
The world given
And the world that is.
And taught my daughters to swim.
Their father is Icarus.
Their mother is Yemoja.
The death he wanted
Was his own —
And he can watch
from the bottom of the sea.
-JBHarris, 4.2024