selkie statistical outliers

maggie chirdo

To find what was stolen and
stay anyway will make me a
poor representative of my kind.
How warm I once was! How foolish I’ll be known!

There’s another                          who never had hers stolen
gave it freely to a human woman who
in turn chopped off her
heavy hair to join her half
the year at sea.

We make mothers myths
when mothers leave their children. Conjure spells,
rituals, restrictions. Make reclamation a crime. Make nonsense of departure.
Whole worlds sprung up
to keep mommy away.

Now, the men among my kind are said to
never have theirs taken. Instead
they lure lovers to the deep. But I’ve met
too many washed-up half-men to go on
accepting that.

By the salted dawn I look you over and decide to
stay. No child tying me, no moral
obligation, only my coat on a hook in
your closet, my miraculous ankles intertwined
with yours. When you wake      whatever we have
lurches forward on equal footing.

about the author

Maggie Chirdo (she/her(s)) is a writer from a humid slice of southeast Texas. Her poetry and journalism appears in Texas Observer, Entropy Magazine, Bitch Media, Little Blue Marble, and elsewhere. If Twitter still exists, come chat with her about fashion and the queer southern gothic @maggiechirdo.