The Marriages: The selkie

Sometimes when you’re sleeping
so deeply the walls breathe with you I
slip on your skin
rich oil at my hips and shoulders
and it does nothing to my flesh

not even when I’m staring straight
from the window to the ocean
not even when I’m watching the slick
heads bob in and out of whitecaps
looking for you—not even then

Sometimes when your breath fills
the air in our home with salt I
put your skin on so far from
our bed that you don’t see me
so far that I know you’ll never find it
so far I know you’ll never leave me

not even if you dive naked into
the water gleaming like I never see you anymore
not even if you called out to your sisters
they wouldn’t recognize you even then

Sometimes I say I’m leaving town and I
spend whole nights wrapped in your skin wishing
it would change me slick and smooth
wishing I could slide thick satin into the water beside you
and wet my teeth with your joy

Author of the article

Gemma Cooper-Novack is a writer, arts educator, and writing coach. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in more than twenty journals, including Amethyst Arsenic, Ballard Street Poetry Journal (Pushcart Prize nomination), Bellevue Literary Review, Cider Press Review, and Santa Fe Writers Project. Gemma’s plays have been produced in Chicago and New York, and her articles have appeared on Feminist Review and Elevate Difference and in NASPA Knowledge Communities. She has been awarded artist’s residencies at Can Serrat Centro de Actividades Artísticas in Catalonia, the Betsy Hotel Writer’s Room in Miami Beach, BetterArts in northern New York, and Wildacres in North Carolina, and enjoys baking cookies and walking on stilts in her spare time.