Kyndal Thomas: I’m Still Learning to Fly

I’m Still Learning to Fly

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

—Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

I want to steal his helium
or borrow it, maybe a trade.
My steel feet for his breath
lighter than air. My dad

is big for a gymnast, tall
and broad, but if he could
find a toe small enough to fit
on the ruffle of a chrysanthemum,
I’m sure he could balance there.

I mean it. When I was small
I could lift his whole body,
letting him levitate just against
my forearms, the two of us
an upturned pyramid.

He was slippery. The lotion
slathered over his skin
made the water bead up
and roll from his shoulders
raining down around me,

the way everything
rolled and rained from him.

All the things that I hold
in my lungs have always
rolled and rained from him, but I
could lift him. Maybe that’s why
I could lift him. All his buoyant
glory sat easy in my small hands.

In the shallow end of the pool,
he rode the air above me.

Reflect

Before he fell, my dad’s dark,
calloused hands carried warm
kitchen sink water across hot
pavement, through sopping green
blades. His knees, bent, black
and bluely hued, bumped
the plastic pool wall, creating soft
ripple rings where the water met
my lowest rib. He let the warm water
slide smooth and low into the cool
puddle of yard hose water. Not to splash
over our small seated frames and run
into our umber eyes or flatten our curls.

Back and forth carrying the dull pot,
with paternal ease, he tempered
that chill hose water. He never
groaned or creaked or questioned.
Just laughed, full and deep, back
and forth. And it echoed as we splashed
and screamed, clear, comfortable
droplets flying, reflecting all the shades
and shapes that shaped our world.

When he fell, far and down and all
alone, he was made to leave
what he was fixing unfixed.

He fell, ladder rung, flesh
broke, and bone shattered.
And I fell with him. I felt
the gravity, the impact,
the rupture of blackness
as power as prophecy
as wonder as everlasting

as his, as mine and ours.

When he fell, I tried not to groan,
to creak, and drag my feet
across pink tile to where he sits,
stuck on green corduroy covered
down and foam, but I usually do.

Our hands, light for dark,
carry plates, and glasses, remotes
and cords and cards, back and forth
to and from his couch cushion.
And he still laughs, from that deep place
we both have, that I can’t yet reach.

It reverberates all around him,
foil balloons levitating, not still,
but steady, reflecting all the shades
and shapes that shape the life
that run thick through our veins.

Kyndal Thomas is a Texas-raised, Brooklyn-based poet. She graduated with honors from the creative writing program at Northwestern University and is a recipient of the Faricy Award for Poetry and a Brooklyn Poets fellowship. Her work has been featured in Brooklyn Poets' Poet of the Week feature and is forthcoming in Lunch Ticket’s Amuse-Bouche series. She works in the New York City literary non-profit sphere, with a focus on programming and a passion for inclusive and accessible creative spaces.