Skinny Dipping

Because the waves
bring me home,
hundreds of miles
inland.


The wakes of boats
in passing, the buoys
orange and dancing.
We are home,
we are home
in my body 
I am home.


Near water I am
overtaken, breathless.
I have never lived
by the sea,
but we all belong to it.
Inherently,
I am its property.


And so with the
urge to go home
and drown in its
love, I am tugging off
my jeans on the sand,
in the light of day,
with children sounds
down the muddy beach.


And I am unhinging 
fabric and letting my
hair down where it
belongs in the breezes.


My legs bare and sanded
I have never felt more comfortable
in the eyes of strangers
and the motherland.
Gazes wash over me
and I am plunging inside
the womb I belonged to,
too long ago to count
anymore.


clothes are tedious things,
and in this embrace they
are lost,
they fall away
and I hesitate to float,
still- my body rising
from the water,
bright white
and fleshy.


But against me
washes the warm hands
of my mother, 
and the bottom of this stretch
is cool and dark on my toes.


Here I lie washing up against
the shores,
a mermaid returned home
after so long.


I sprouted legs once,
on a metal table
fresh with strawberry jam blood,
a tadpole growing up.


And I can't rid myself of
the curse that crowned
me mammal,
without gills,
without sea.


So I get as close as I can
on the mud beach 
too far from the Atlantic.


[This is a mostly true story.]