Selkie
I was here or there for years with no one
noticing. Wet and black I was part
of the seascape. Watching, waiting.
Yet when you cried seven tears into a lake
large enough to hold it’s own tide, I forgot
the spot of pebbled sand I’d christened home.
I became your mother, sister, lover;
made breakfast from eggs, ripe cheese;
raised babies that took to water like seals.
The night I left our bed as cerulean turned
to indigo outside the window, algae
sang from under every lichened stone.
And I unearthed the brocaded skin of who
I was before you, put it on and watched
words form from water as I swam away.
(Published by Prolific Press, Poetry Quarterly Winter 2015)
