“The
most common theme in selkie folklore, however, is one in which a cunning young
man acquires, either by trickery or theft, a selkie-girl’s sealskin.”
For years, you wore ordinary as a
housecoat.
Typed memos by day and made weak
martinis by night. For years, you
were the one
they could count on to sweep all the
unsaid things
under the rug. Sometimes you’re
oblivious to blue.
Sometimes a shadow caught in a pool
of light
makes you want to scratch off your
skin,
dissolve in tides of wind that swing
out and across
the street’s moonlit lawns. Now, with your life
half gone, your child of amber eyes
and ruby shoes
hands you what was nailed to the
bottom
of a long-lost trunk. For six nights
you sleep on shore, cocooned in
love’s sheer
blanket. On the seventh you slip an
arm
into fur that still glows like
coals, feel
how this shell of warmth still holds
an echo of water’s deep lullaby.
As you dive into a tango of stars,
you turn
and watch her hand moving in adagio,
perfectly timed to the story you
always told.
2 comments:
Lori Lamothe's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Avatar Review, Goblin Fruit, Fogged Clarity and The Nervous Breakdown. Her blog, Diary in Irregular Ink, can be found at inkdiary.blogspot.com.
That first line is a bullet wound.
Post a Comment