Surfer Girl by Kathryn Kulpa
- 7 days ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
For Brian Wilson
When you roll tumbled from the waves like a de-fuzzed towel from a dryer, fingers dragging sand from your mermaid hair gone free, stretched-out scrunchie lost to the waves, and you jelly-legs stagger to shore, tug your ankle strap and your board bobs up like the best good dog, a dog who always comes when you call and never runs away because somebody’s uncle beat him, and you stand while this whole world whirls around you, muscles you didn’t know you had singing a wild chorus, find the horizon, take stock: a cut on your chin, split lip bleeding salt into salt, friction burn on your knee, one toenail hanging on by the tiniest tough corner and you know later you will rip that last shred off and walk into school bare-toed and proud while the pretty girls snark Nice pedicure! and you laugh, because this is better than pretty.
Author's Note:
When the world is too much with me, my favorite recharge/sanity saver is just to go into my room—ideally with a cuddly cat or two—and read. Any time of day, any weather, no accessories needed, just a book. Shut the door, silence my phone, ignore the news, and escape into the story. When I’m feeling vulnerable or stressed, I find the best book is one I’ve read a hundred times before, a childhood favorite, so there’s the familiarity of well-loved passages, but no surprises: I already know things are going to turn out all right.
KATHRYN KULPA lives where Massachusetts meets Rhode Island and writes where poetry meets prose. She has work in Boudin, Flash Frog, Ghost Parachute, HAD, matchbook, and Moon City Review. Her chapbooks include A MAP OF LOST PLACES (Gold Line Press) and FOR EVERY TOWER, A PRINCESS (Porkbelly Press).
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