Sea Monsters

Rachel Bruce

When salt next mats my hair,

I will chop it off and fly to my beloved horrors.

I will have to become monstrous —

I’m already halfway there.

A pretty picture: three sisters in misery.

Each of us foretellers,

lusting for the blood of the damned.

I feel as though my hair is always matted.

The world has its hooks in my locks

for good men to pull at.

Evenings hang like fishing lines.

I might doze with Charybdis,

diving through the riches of the sea.

The secret of her face brings warmth to my cheeks,

her whirlpool breath obscuring something scaly.

I want to count the drowned souls in her eyelashes.

Or I could lie with my Scylla,

many-headed and vicious, her voice full of howling.

She has long forgotten the ways of the nymphs,

but she could teach me how to smell a thunderstorm.

There is something charming in how she picks her teeth.

Waves echo back the cries of fledgling birds —

my sisters’ fangs are sharp enough to cut wire.

Sometimes I dream that I’m the devil.

I think I should like to eat you.