To Love a Selkie

You think you know what it is to love a selkie.
      Or a mermaid,
      an undine,
      a creature born of the sea.
You look at your wife,
      your lover,
      an unknown woman at the end of the bar
and know she will never belong to you.
What difference if she be mortal or fey?

She keeps a calendar
      of conference calls,
      soccer practice schedules,
      family birthdays,
And a to-do list
      for dusting the floorboards,
      calling the orthodontist,
      tending your soul,
Overwhelming the memory that
this is not where she belongs.
But you remember,
      when you hear her speak, soft and breathy,
            as if mere air can’t carry her voice,
      when you see her slicking lotion over skin
            that flakes and cracks in sunlight, in cold,
      when you feel the unnaturalness of her thighs spread,
            her heels pressed into your hips.

You tell yourself that the skin–
      buried beneath the toolbox in the garage,
      behind the lawnmower in the shed,
      in the basement of your parents’ house
            with your GI Joe figures and letterman jacket–
is just a fur coat,
a disguise that hid the woman inside.
You tell yourself that stripping her of that outer skin
was an act of liberation.
Not a betrayal, a violation.

What then is this trembling that feels like fear
when you see her tilt her head, listening,
      to the slosh of a washing machine,
      the splash of tires on a rain-shimmered street,
      the pulse of blood from the chambers of her heart,
that echo of the tide’s ebb and flow?
Your heart quivers then and you think,
“This is love.”

You think you know what it is to love a selkie,
but you do not.
Not until the night your wife slips back into her skin,
      tattered and moth-eaten as it may be,
and transforms,
      sliding out of your grasp and into the sea.
Your heart breaks with the waves,
      as she sings her song
            in a voice you’ve never heard.
You stand on the shingle and swear
you will never steal her skin again,
      if only she’ll return once in a while,
and you are seized with the sudden knowing that
this is what it is to love a selkie.

But I say again:
You do not know what it is to love a selkie,
      not while sand surrounds your soles.
Dive into the murky depths of her home,
      chasing the touch of seal-fur skin
      or fish scales,
not knowing if her kiss
      will give you breath
      or steal it
            while you drown.
Crawl to shore,
      if you survive,
To stand sentry on the cliffs,
and beachcomb on the margin.

That is what it is to love a selkie.