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)