DAMNED BE THEM WAVES AND CURSED BE THESE THORNS

Dammed be them waves and cursed be these thorns that impinge themselves against her body like carrion searching for cadaverous substance to prey upon.

The child, capsized on the sand, covered in a gash of reddened silk slashed across her belly and part of her face and out of her belly again, in splashes of crimson; she’s become a woman today.

Damn each an every one of the particles that had dared saddle this sea, that reminded and rode, gloating in awe of her glow that childhood won’t accompany back to her home.

Bleeding herself lost in the sand she twisted so, saltwater sprung from her eyes, a tremulous cry wasting thrown words, each last one more and more lost, upon this shipwrecked high noon on vigil from the dawn.

She had travelled, sailing the wake of a sunk dream, to smash into the abandoned beach, having a’ crossed the sea. Borne upon a raft, ragged and drunk, built of fishbone and twine and clothed in the remains of sickened women and mothers and sinners who wouldn’t let her womanly be.

In fact, silence had been what she wished. Forever frozen in time, a bud in no hurry to grow… Driven mad by the blood threatening to burst, she hijacked the dark ship and set off to sea.

Through violent waters violated in cobalt blue, she crossed, half submerged, the continental shelf.

To cast upon this forgotten beach, on this wounded coast of a continent sculpted in glass.

Previous, she had rowed onwards on the whim of a kiss, her legs turned to oars, her eyes a compass stuck on the stars… Her breath the fuel that pushed her deflowering sails, her duvet hanged to dry out at sea.

On the way she thought she heard the ten mermen, masters of the free-moaning scream, playing to tempt her with their song, drawing her beneath.

While she, blinded by the fury that gave lie to the beautiful word, that spat forth from those fishy tailed men, their cries she could but ignore.

To arrive, dying of thirst, to the moribund shoreline, a new land in which to dance, wither and fall, teeth first, in the sand.

She stumbled the spaces remaining between ship and shore, red ribbons coloured a rake in the salt.

To fall, deadened with fear, upon the first kiss the beached sand fleetingly stole from the sea.

She cried, now that no one could see her, from eyes, from legs, liquid that falls… fallacies of water of all possible colour, rivers that signed the arrival of this, her autumn, her fall…

An auburn haired princess, body held clothed in the sand, her stare so naked, struck in the rise of the moon, on her reflection now given to sea

The moon, tonight bathed in golden, face covered by slashes of red… Forgotten are the fishnets and, saltcorpses dying on shadows, projecting the angles she now calls a home…

And in this twilight by the dawn of the new mooning, she let herself be kissed by that woman she had brought on her insides, that was about to be born….

She damned the waves, she cursed all the thorns but, staring up at the gold of the moon, her reflection on water, she can’t seem to stop crying.

She just can’t stop dropping it… dripping her childhood far, far away…