Selkie

I put my selkie pendant on that morning and found myself fully clothed in the sea. “I will swim, and I will fly, sing the songs the sea has brought me” my daughter sings as she floats on her back, hazel eyes open to the sky and hair flowing around her. Witch eyes, turning green with sea air and salty tears. “The seaweed looks like elderberries, mama” “that’s right.” I ask her if she remembers the story I told her of the women who put their seal skins back on and slip home into the water and would she like to go home with the seals one day? She remembers and says I want to stay with you, but I would like to ride a dolphin. “Maybe I should offer you back to mother sea anyway, return her daughter to her” she giggles and wriggles and says “say more things, mama” I lick my lips and taste salt, remembering the monthly cravings for it and the debilitating pain I inherited from my mother. In the tales they say the selkie woman pined away for the sea, for she could not thrive on the land. It seems like I come from a line of pining women, who can become immobile with the ache… maybe the craving is the thirst to slip back into the dark deep whence we came. Taste salt on our lips once more. Later we leave the sea to eat welsh cakes and I drink tea. Mother and daughter on the rock. I had been trying to learn the sea song for so long I wrote it down and brought it with me. We are given so much and sometimes all we have to give in return is a song.