IN JUPITER IT RAINS

t w e l v e

spring cleaning my mother out of this body

dark haired siren of volatile kisses you sweep me into the waves of angered half beings, screeching at my ear as you plunge me deeper into the ocean I can't ever escape. I know you - mother -
I know the seas that rock me in a lullaby you sang to make me swallow your cries. but i'm not ever going to become the graveyard of ships and disembodied voices of drowned seamen you've lured along with your sisters. I am using the abrasive salt under my tongue to scrub myself clean

- mother -

you are dark haired light eyes too many smiles hiding the broken mass of men you collect and chew on like toothpicks. you want me like you: you keep pulling me into water and away from any other light. you are using our nature to attract souls against me. & to extract myself i have to burn myself in seasalt. boil myself till i am all water no sodium.

- mother -

you can be so gentle when you love me. you can gather me in softness and hold me in warmth that makes me forget it is our nature to devour. i swim to you when you call my name because the salt in my blood aches for your skin and I cannot stop the fact that you've made me a pawn. you are so gentle I weep sometimes at the burning of salt rocks hitting the back of my throat. it is not till you hold sea glass to my throat that I remember sometimes I am your daughter , sometimes your confidant , other times I am your sadnesses

- dark siren called mother -

I don't know how to clean myself of you without making my body coral reef bleached. i don't understand how to make you leave my body when I don't feel home in it. & have you ever rubbed salt into your skin to make it bleed? it hurts, mother. it burns and stings and makes your eyes hazy with tears and your fingers shake as flesh clumps and tears and rips and slides and tissue is scraped at. & why am i your home? why am i doomed to repeat this flagellation .

- hello mother of booming song and broken daughter -

it has been years and i still find myself trying to collect every piece of sea glass i find. I try to catch your echoed songs in jars with the wind. & I never am fully clean of you. every spring i shed you like a selkie sheds their skin. i worry you will remember how powerful sadness can make someone. i worry you will make me your home again after spring.

Dedicated to softgrins because they are precious and way too kind to have had such a tough few months (also did I mention SUPER talented)