Raleigh Review
501(c)(3) Nonprofit 
EIN: 27-2644341
ISSN: 2169-3943​ 
​ —Subscribe here!

The Windsurfer
 ​by Chelsea Dingman

My husband is made of cloth, the sea
staining his skin with salt
as it exhales. Pale, he’s used
to falling from the sky, wings
tangled in the wind. Each tear
is sewn shut by deft hands
and yet, his skin is threadbare,
dragged over rocks onshore
when he makes his descent. Like an arrow,
I draw a needle across the wounds,
waiting for the skin to give, the night
too perilous to excise, to run from. As long as he’s made
to fly without being able to see
the ground, I learn how to glide, to tread
water. But, we’re never freer than
when we’re falling. Death, take me
first, the wind in every hollow. I’m not afraid
of the sound a body makes
when it dips below sea level. I fear
steering the stretched sky alone, wind
tearing through space
he’s left like a song
to hang the hungry sea.