Today, I saw my first Arctic Tern. Hovering white
abreast ocean-beaten boulders, they plunge
for silver herring clasped in rufescent bills.
Before flight, there is the dread,
a complete silence of the flock, like
a careful moment to reconsider, but always
they push up from the coastal edge, pressing
into a 44,000 mile migration from Arctic Circle to
Antarctica. At 4 ounces, they unfurl
at the precipice of another summer.

Rachel Blume is an MA/MFA student in Interior Alaska. A mother to a preschool boy, she is the recipient of the Karchmer Prize in fiction and a 2024 Storyknife Residency. With a focus in fiction, her work has appeared in Tulane’s “Feminist Pedagogy,” “Glass Mountain,” and “Continue the Voice.”