by Colin Bailes

I keep wondering if I am the shore
the waves crash roughly across,
or the waves, endlessly crumbling;

the branches through which sunlight
swirls like smoke, or the skein
of light lacing the branches, rising.

Colin Bailes is an MFA candidate at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he serves as the 2020–2021 Levis Reading Prize Fellow. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blackbird, The Boiler, The McNeese Review, Missouri Review, and Raleigh Review, among other journals. He is originally from Florida.