The Fairytale Wakes

29 - The Lost Daughter

She brings them down to the ocean, often

And sits on the silky sand, watching

Burying her toes in the sand, watching

Like she's afraid.

Come down to us in the ocean, they sing

Come with us into the water, mother

She shakes her flame-red hair and smiles

A forceful, pained thing.

Their father taught them to swim, he did

A sailor's swim, with a thick land body

And arms and feet cutting the water, she doesn't

Know how to swim like that.

But she remembers, oh she remembers.

The day the waves take hold of a child

As if the ocean too remembers

That it once lost her, and demands payment.

Then she runs. She runs with her hard-won feet

She dives into the water, and she's home

She is the water and the water is she

And she almost, almost forgets.

But her child. Her daughter, who dreams of lands

She wants to see, is beneath the water

Face upturned, arms trailing, bubbles breaking

A fish dangling on a line.

And she catches her hand, her daughter's hand

Two strokes with the ghost of her tail and they rise

They rise to the air and back to the land

Crying salt water.

She brings herself down to the ocean, after

And watches its distant horizons, where she

Once played beneath with her sisters, and thinks

Of all she left behind.

Regret is a word that means too many things

And she does not regret this, and yet she does

But her daughter has followed her, down from the castle

Eyes still red from the salt.

Her daughter has followed her, and takes her hand

And together, they walk back home on two feet

Back to the land, with the ocean still

Whispering its promises behind them.

-

-

-

A/N: Sorry for the break. I went away on a short family trip to the Gold Coast, Australia, and spent a few days digging my feet into the softest sand I've ever felt and watching the ocean.