KATIE WOODS

Selkie

He found her spread on golden sand

With debris washed from days before

Upon the grey and slanted shore

By tide.

The grey-white shrug curled in her hand

Her breathing slow as if in sleep

She choked and burbled, tried to speak

and cried.

Inside his house she could not stand

The man who pinned her to his breast

Bound with a ring, denied her rest,

She sighed.

The wedding day, for sure, was grand

She walked the aisle with bleeding feet

And clung to him while in the street

No bride.

Each day she tiptoed to the strand

As in her belly Orca slept,

Half-wave, half-man who’d made her kept

and tied.

One night the sea was high inland

She swelled and burst with heavy child

With black eyes, purple, red, wet, wild;

It died.

Her husband sobbed that she was damned

He smelt the water on her skin

And heard the ocean wailing, thin

He’d tried.

He found the skin at her demand

She dived into the sea, she left

The man crawled home, his heart her theft,

To hide.

He found her golden wedding band

An afterbirth, a lingering curse

From promises of love to worse

She lied.