Conception

Art by Kate Gillett

When they came for me I was underwater, 
the night sky visible through the surface of the creek. 
Poised like that it’s possible to feel you’re drifting 
through space, a constellation; a daughter of the moon.

They forced me out—soaked, dripping. Dragged
through mud. Carrying the moon inside. The moon
—the white orb you’re supposed to forget
that lingers. A phosphorescent tattoo beneath eyelids.

                                                     \

I whispered my voice into the coil of a shell, 
a voluntary little mermaid, surrendering it back 
to the sea. Safe where silence is heard. 
Safe, where breath leaves a trace, bubbling
from the depth to the surface.

Last night I walked, feet crackling on kelp heaped 
upon the shoreline. When the swell frothed at my toes
I felt the lick of my own tongue, cold and wet
with something almost forgotten, remembered 
and held in trust.

It was not mine to surrender, she whispered.