most boys I know
wouldn’t do that.
most boys I know
wouldn’t give up anything,
even things
that were never
really theirs.
I don’t mind the rumors about what I’m carrying in the pockets of my skirts as I walk home at night. Deep ocean kelp. Algae as bright as polished turquoise. The iridescence of empty shells. Sea sparkle that’s poison to anyone else,but that my salt-soaked heart lets me hold.
The rumors say I float along the floor of the marine shelf like a wraith, collecting pieces of the ocean for my brujería.
To be fair, they’re not wrong.
my family doesn’t like it,
how often the land
pulls me onto shore.
but they know where I usually end up,
with my father’s older cousin
and her wife, the women who raised him,
in the same lavender house
where he grew up.
they’re the women
who leave clothes for me
at the edge of the seawall.
they’re the women who leave
the back door unlocked
when the tide comes in.
My mother always leaves the garden door unlocked for me. I used to wear my keys around my neck but sometimes the ocean would take them, and whimsical as that may sound, it got annoying and expensive, fast. I could hear the mischief and laughter in the shifting of the currents, like the sea was trying to get me to stay by hiding something I needed.
“I can’t stay,” I tried to whisper to the water.
Oh, but you were born here, the currents murmured back.You have salt in your blood. You’re never really gone.
the women in the lavender house
have offered to set the record straight.
they’ve offered to tell everyone
