It was me
It began low,
in the damp cellar of the sea,
where star-ash soured into brine.
Alchemic mud heaved upward,
vomited from vents and wounds,
a million drifting scraps of almost-life
black streamers waving
as if testing for breath.
I was there
or something that would become me,
salted and blind,
carried inland with the silt
of forgotten shores.
Angel-hair filaments brushed past
like nerves learning pain,
snowflake cells stumbled and split,
tripped over themselves
in the green dark.
The cauldron churned,
rain-beaten, fever-swollen,
and beneath its scum-slick skin
an eye squinted open,
not knowing what it saw.
The vessel woke.
The universe shuddered,
and the sea rocked itself
as if soothing a crying child,
webbed with light,
heavy with wanting
each of us a note
from that first wet music,
each of us carrying the ocean
in our blood,
remembering, dimly,
it was me.
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