Micah Conkling won the Poetry Category for the theme Architecture of Home with his piece "Refraction."
Micah Conkling is a writer from the Kansas City area who holds an M.A. in English from West Virginia University. His work has appeared in Steinbeck Review, Ruminate Magazine, and Deep South Magazine.
Refraction
My youngest, 3, her fingers eternally sticky from smuggled scoops in the Nutella jar,
squeals from our bathroom and summons me to run up the stairs —
“Dad, hurry! It’s a rainbow!”
Late afternoon sunlight breaks through the transom window,
shines through the thick, glass shower door and
imprints a prism on a wall.
I could tell her what it is.
When passing through an angular, transparent object, light refracts and breaks into distinct colors, which forms the spectrum of ROYGBIV.
I could tell her what it is. But I’d be lying.
It’s magic, it’s a miracle, it is a rainbow.
We marvel. Touching the wall, manipulating bends, making shadows.
When she remembers this house, I don’t care so much
if she can describe the floorplan or furniture, or recall
the pale pink April blooms of our front-yard flowering dogwood.
She might forget (I will not) the thud she’d make leaping out of bed,
the pitter-patter of feet scuttling across the landing
to wake us up, sometimes peeling open our eyelids with chocolatey hands.
I want her to feel that there was light and color in every room.
“No, really,” she might try to convince her own children.
“It wasn’t an illusion. We had rainbows on our walls.”
