Oyster Tongue 

I’ve given my body to the ocean sooner than I give it To a man. Once a thing I feared, now a force to which I surrender. Waves sweeping over me. It enters all of me. I splutter but I love. The thrill. Earth. Salt and skin. Undulations of simply being. Presence. here in this sacred swim. Sucking me under. Merky depths of truth And pain, beauty in these granules of historic rock. abrasive against the cells of me. My younger self, knocked down by the force of a wave - stripped, almost bare ran spluttering from the danger of it. Half naked. Afraid. a baby animal. Now, The ocean pounds us both the same, that baby and me, softening our edges, reducing us to basic elements, suffocating me slightly. Releasing me when I need the air.

And a man. Can he do the same. Is he soft enough? To recognise my sacred soul, a spirit of an unseen realm, and all this skin born of the earth. Can his fingers swim in my hair, can his eyes see the animal in me. The monsters and the elk. Standing. Seeking. Feeling. Can his demons - his forest of wild - be revealed freely. an offering. Honest. Fearless in and of himself. So that I can be, too. Can he lose himself in me, not purely for his own. a moment, for me too. The truth of it. simultaneously. Cells and skin and rock and truth. Can he make space for me to lose myself in him. Oceanic. Sweeping. Can there be a sacred truth reducing us both in the friction. Tectonic plates. Cells and skin and histories combined.

I have spoken of men with muscles. Bulging. What If I expire at my own given mercy to their biceps, the air expelled from my lungs. Beneath a body and a silken tone of voice. A crease in the sheets, where I’d finally be at peace. Is that my truth? Or does my mind deceive me. Again. I have once already almost died at the hands of a man. He couldn’t finish me; the tentacles of his weeds snapping as they pulled me into depths of sharp crags. Thought of it as love, to see how deep I could go into the pressure chamber. My mother taught me to iron our sheets. Beneath the crease, reduced to a matter of parts that I now piece back together. I sand my own edges on the ocean floor and check if they fit. Coat myself in shiny glue, layers of lacquer. A pearl safe in the shell. Is death easier than this? Easier than breaking open. Oyster tongue uncovered, exposed to shine in the light of day. Easier than swimming to a shore I am yet to know. Is death in the throes of passion and union with a man. A necklace. Easier than to wake and find it but an act. Another layer of ending that never ends. What if he leaves me only broken. Smashed. Further displaced. Crumbs of pebbles and sand never to be one again. A mix of basic elements at the bottom of an ocean. No clam to claim me this time. Unfinished. Again.

The ocean will always be mine. Part of me. With me. Returning to threaten and whisper. It will stay in my memory as a threat and a love. It will remain in my ears for days to come. still calling me sweetly to release it and then go back for more. Always invited. Always welcomed. Can a man be such a force?

The Monster and the Elk, 2023