Transition

Blinded by these artificial lights,
Vanquished by the finite truth.
Friends are a rescue,
To stop the voyeur
Into the depths of darkness
And struggle.
Yet, internally
Bowels are shaking
As one college female
Balances her life
On a towering pedestal.
There’s a cliff,
A hundred foot tall cliff
Overhanging the world
Of spit and fear.
A jump; one jump is all it takes
To go blinded, circling down into that dank, dark abyss.

This never-ending pinwheel life
Spins on its edge,
As the college female topples
To her death amongst
The dead fishies.
She sees decomposing bones,
Marrow, and whale sinew under there.
Everything’s all chewed up and weathered
By time itself.
Diving deeper she finds rotting bodies on the sandy ocean floor.
It is dark and quiet, after her jump of insanity
Off that monstrous cliff.

Bubbles shoot from her mouth,
And gills sprout on the outskirts of her sensitive neck.
She rubs the glassy new films attached to her eyeballs.
(the eye sockets feel sore and tender to the touch.)
This college female swims through the murky, blue/green water
To find her fingers and toes
Conjoined
Into flippers;
Her belly now as smooth as glass;
Her nose
Wet and small.
She brushes her face with her front flippers,
And feels sharp ling bristles
Rub against her slippery cheek.

Whiskers.

Blinking her eyes,
Blinded by pure confusion
She sees pale ghosts in the water with sterling,
Haunted faces.
Gaunt and old flesh
Disintegrated;
detaching from bone and blood.
Caked with corral,
some look into her eyes
With longing.
“I am a Seal”
The college female thinks,
And flaps her hind flippers
in the thick foggy seawater to got faster.

A Seal indeed.

A simple animal with no act
Or virtues but to be born, eat, sleep, excrement;
Find a male mate for life, have babies, raise those baby seals, then grow old and die.
Either by a fisherman’s accident, or plastic rings
Caught around the throat.
A simple animal
That lives
Just to live.
With no deadlines, rejections, emotions,
bad grades, time management problems,
schedules, school issues, relationships,
or the overwhelming lists that abide inside her soul;
Documents her every move.
No worries
But to
Stay Alive.

Yes, the now female Seal,
The Seal female
Sees spirits circling underwater.
Is she a Seal or a monster?
‘Fore she can’t see herself
Under here.
Maybe she’s not a Seal,
But a slimy, grimy sprite
Mermaid-like creature.

A Selkie.

Cursed Woman-Seal .
Changes into a beast when she touches water’s firm grasp.
Or changes into a Person when she touches land.
(The second is more accurate.)
This Selkie
Dives deeper, skims the depths for answers
But only hears whispers and false lies
That she tells herself.
Only sees shimmers of the dead,
Soaked-through
The epistemological reality
Of black hearted thoughts
With sinking tides
That cast away
Past failure until reason pulls and tugs
Against her slippery, Seal formed body;

Calling her home.

She swims up
Faster and faster
As light filters through,
once again,
and fresh air invades her steel blue lungs.
Blinded by these artificial lights,
Vanquished by the finite truth.
A Transformation;
Complete.

From Woman
To Seal
To Woman
Back again;
The college female awakens.