The Orison of Salt
A woman speaks to the drowned moon
The tide drags at my hem with fingers of kelp, pulling, pulling, a lover begging at my feet. The wind is a priest tonight, his breath thick with sermon, his hands buried in the dark mane of the sea. I do not answer him, only watch the moon bow her shrouded head beneath the waves.
I was born in the throat of a storm, flung from my mother like a stone from a sling. My first wail was swallowed by thunder, and I have been speaking in echoes ever since. The night still remembers me, calls me back in the hush of the reeds, in the hush of my own ribs.
The house I left still stands, cracked at its corners, its bones brittle with salt. My father’s voice lingers in the walls, heavy as damp wood, though his body is dust and his breath is loam. My mother’s hands are pressed into the grain of the table, a ghost of toil and flour, and still, I do not return.
My feet know the hush of the shore, the promise of tide pools like open mouths. I walk where the water laps, where the drowned things rise and sink, nameless but not forgotten. I do not fear the sea, though she has eaten every woman I have loved.
Once, I buried my heart in the belly of a fish, stitched it shut with nettles, let the river swallow it whole. Still, it beat in my chest, stubborn as a war drum, thick as hunger, red as the sun dissolving. A thing that will not die, no matter how I drown it.
Tonight, the sea sings low, a dirge I have always known, a hymn braided into my marrow. The wind begs at my back, the moon wavers, the tide pulls like a cradle rocking, rocking. I step forward, and the water parts like an old friend’s arms.
© Ani Eldritch, 2025. All Rights Reserved.
