Selkie-song (WC)

 

(Wendy Cabell, December 29, 2024, afterfeast of the Nativity, 4th day of Chanukah, feast of (above) Our Lady of Spire (impacted Salve Regina prayer), Our Lady of the Flowers, the Holy Innocents, Saints David/Joseph/James, Blessed William Howard. Image from here.)

Selkie-song 

“Such a shame to sign Anonymous!” Mr Poitier pokes his head out of the editor’s office, starts to scribble my name.  “I want it back then,” I say. It’s freshman year. I’d circled past this door once, twice, held my breath — before slipping it in. My first submitted work. One of the poems has a sketched seal, her baby fur warm in the Arctic spring. Mr Poitier sighs,  “Anonymous it is.” Then he smiles. The last verse must’ve etched itself in somehow, remains: 

like the seal I shift

change, become a new person —

yet I’m still the same

*From prompt: Freewrite as inspired by excerpt from Just Kids by Patti Smith. From Lisa Freedman’s BreatheReadWrite Studio time, December 29, 2024.