I am no longer a mother—
I have surrendered my body to the surgeon’s
sea shells and fish bones; and my son
to the teal press of synthetic skin and the clean plastic mouth
which kisses him flush with breath.
His blue cheeks expand: little lungs forced to work.
The casket will be crafted from grains of sand
freed from my womb or his ocean.
The gravestone will be the size of
my heart. His heart,
cold and narrow and sharp as steel
trapped under paper-thin skin.
That thing in that cot is not my child. The body
I am in is not a mother’s.
I have given my son to the salt and myself
to the shore. The swell will swallow me and wring out
the blood, the sweat, the milk which clogs
my veins—he was born breathing
water.
Spread out on their table they gut me,
marvelling at the wet of my insides—
salt and brine and hundreds of pearls.
The pearl that is my heart. The pearl that is him,
not that creature which they laid on my breasts
To die.
My son is ruddy and laughing already!
What a fast learner, the nurses exclaim
as already he strides and swims and
blows bubbles in the water; sporting strong lungs
that will not collapse under his rib weight.
I have fashioned him out of sea-glass indestructible,
and carved him fresh organs from sand.
I have given my son to the sea and I hold him
too tightly as we submerge. I am
no longer a mother. The woman in the water is.
Her son is half-fish, half-mer, entirely hers.
The hole in her heart lets all the water out.
