My voice gets lost in these
Cimmerian shades of winter,
where thin skies pin clouds,
sailing sideways in brushstroke.

This coat weighs upon me like
portraits of seadogs battling tides,
left to stitch a gash of torrential waves
on a wall of ocean white.

I have bled these winters,
along with the early dismissal of day,
combed the wooded pines
seeking sunlight upon my face,

knowing it is responsible for too much
of who I am, leaning on the axis of light,
awaiting rotation, a skip of the needle to
thread the promise of another season.

Sabrina Hicks lives in Arizona with her family. She has published poetry in Gyroscope Review, Poetry Breakfast, and was the recent Grand Prize winner of the Writer’s Digest 85th Annual Writing Competition for her fiction.