Botticelli

I do not belong on land, where bodies are as rigid as dried
coral castles; I belong to the surf, where they are fluid,

amorphous as dreams in the whispering tumble of wild riptide.
Even now, with brine scoured from my tangled mane

 of wilted kelp, the flowering barnacles plucked from my flesh –
I feel the ocean’s roar coiled in the smooth shell of my heart.

 Oil spills paint my stained-glass portrait across the
surface of the sea. I am perfect in my pollution.

 And I was never born, but rose from the frothing whitecaps,
steaming with the rage of Father’s emasculation.

I am a broken mirror; he cannot see himself in me at all.
Like a pearl within an oyster, I feel most at home in my

 boudoir – as pink as the velvet throat of a moray eel.
If I open my mouth, will you hear siren song or tempest?

You will remember me when the ocean
salt stings a healing wound - and, with a touch,
the memory dissolves to foam and fantasy.