We salt, we brine, we perfume from
the ocean’s stinging breath.
We go, we flow, we ebb, we come
until nothing is left.
At night we dream of sequined gowns
electric pinks and blues
that flash like streaks of coloured light
through skies of changing hues.
We take our ritual daybreak flight
and float down to the seas
then scour buckets back to white
the stink, it never leaves.
It follows us to market street
squats amongst the flies
swirls in whorls of fetid heat
and mounds of glassy eyes.
It is our lot to rip and gut
and scrape away at scales
with fingers calloused dry and cut
and broken brittle nails.
We salt, we brine, we perfume from
the ocean’s stinging breath.
We go, we flow, we ebb, we come
until nothing is left
but the shadowed depths ten fathoms deep
that dwell beneath our lives.
We dream of elegance asleep and
awake as poor fish wives.