détente

by Cassondra Windwalker ​

selkies and sand-fairies have long been at war I know this, not from storybooks or songs, but from the hollow place in my belly where babies once slept: it is the same sort of battle that sends starlight surging across galaxies, straining to glimmer on the lost faces of pallasites, a blow that aches like a caress so I play mediator sifting the black sand for even the tiniest of unshattered spiral shells, leaving them as offerings on stones stained by high tide marks and when I squint into the light, where the sun wicks fog from the waves and sends it billowing and tumbling over the shore, I stand, signatory, as the seal-folk shed their skins, and the sand-fairies fold away their abrading wings to trade treasures with their former families and—no doubt—hatch common plots against us mortal grabbers with our open mouths and clenched fists and dirty, dirty, oil-stained feet.

Cassondra Windwalker writes full-time from the southern coast of Alaska. Her poetry collections include, The Almost-Children, as well as the award-winning books, tide tables and tea with god and The Bench. She also has several novels available in bookstores and online, most recently, Love Like A Cephalopod, Hold My Place, and Idle Hands. She enjoys interacting with artists, readers, and all sorts of magical folk on Twitter @WindwalkerWrite.