Stella Nickerson
Sunlight
The great black whales that swim across the sun
know everything you've ever done in sunlight.
Your pale, apologetic smiles
slide up the line of light to them.
They see the hands you hold on public streets,
and grind their teeth to eat your kindest words.
They like you quite a lot, you know—
To them you have no shadow.
Bio
Stella Nickerson is a professor of chemical engineering at Brigham Young University. Her poems have appeared in Mezzo Cammin, the Rotary Dial, Strong Verse, and Strange Horizons.