A Lark at the Edge of the World
A woman in the wind, singing
The tide licked the bones of the bay, and I, barefoot in the froth, felt the salt climb my ankles like ivy. My mother once told me the sea takes what it loves — ships, widows, daughters with hair like eelgrass, hands like open nets. I let it kiss my skin, knowing I was already half-swallowed.
The wind was a jealous thing, rough-palmed and greedy, rattling the slats of the old house on the hill where my grandmother died in her sleep. She left behind jars of lavender, foxed hymnals, a clock that forgot the hour before she did. I dreamed of her fingers, blue-veined and certain, kneading dough as if pressing ghosts into loaves.
Once, my father called me a storm, and I thought it a blessing until I learned storms end. I was twelve when he left, sixteen when I stopped waiting, twenty-two when I found his old boots by the door, cracked with absence, tongues curling like unspoken names. Still, I dream of his voice, thick as dark bread, saying my name with the weight of a promise unmade.
The fields hum with secrets, the wheat nodding its many heads to a hymn only the wind knows. I walk among them at dusk, fingers brushing the stalks like the spine of a sleeping beast, and think of the women before me — blood-tied and wind-worn, their voices folded into the hush of the earth. I am their echo, their bright and vanishing lark.
I have seen the sun break open like a yolk, spilling gold across the river’s back. I have watched rain silver the eaves, listened to the hush of it, a lullaby for the woken world. And I have learned, in my body, in my bones, that I, too, am a thing the sea will not forget.
© Ani Eldritch, 2025. All Rights Reserved.
