I.
Like other seaside children, my parents smoked
outspoken dreams and buried them in the sand.
Years of racing dolphins and weaving nets sailed by,
until their dreams washed up: speckled, yet intact.
After chewing on exhumed fantasies like undercooked rice,
they spat out complacency & escaped their storm-stricken island.
II.
I grew up straining to unstitch the dealings of fate
sewn into my skin: a sinking stone for a body &
two hands that mistook soft water for sticky honey.
A forest of seaweed bloomed between my teeth,
so I locked my parents’ language between my ribs
only to cough it up on pouring nights like a sour secret.
III.
One night, my parents found me: a fishbone sucked of flesh,
crying for belonging. Stories of the island unspooled from
their tight-knit lips, painting pictures of a shore-striped world
eclipsed by the bottom of the sea. Tendrils of memory tugged
me to sleep & when I woke, their imprints stained my tangled
bedsheets, curling around my legs like the softest of shackles.