***
She is Grey Mother and we her obedient daughters. Acolytes enact an immortality penance ritual. Under a concrete sky, layers are shed in preparation: is this the road to the Western Lands?
We process. White feet pushed through wrinkled petticoats, skins under her skin. Slow. Our insignificance thrown into her vast, chilly embrace. The prison of her arms. Pushed and pulled to her whim, light as corks in a tin bathtub.
Freedom in the confinement, let it go to the to and fro of waves. Surrender now. Let her rock you, take you, pull you deeper in.
In the below, furnished worlds: seaweed bunting, wrack ribbons, the fingers of anemones stretched to lit sea ceiling.
Resist the pull. Bounce back, Barbarellas. Bathing beauties beached.
“Did you go in there?” asks the young girl on the school trip. “Is there dolphins?”
***
