「 ✦ seph ✦ 」
🪐 she/her ☁️ 22 yrs ☄️ listening to hozier all day every day ⚡️ just trying to write a little 🌌 stay curious
「 ✦ seph ✦ 」
🪐 she/her ☁️ 22 yrs ☄️ listening to hozier all day every day ⚡️ just trying to write a little 🌌 stay curious
🪐 she/her ☁️ 22 yrs ☄️ listening to hozier all day every day ⚡️ just trying to write a little 🌌 stay curious
🪐 she/her ☁️ 22 yrs ☄️ listening to hozier all day every day ⚡️ just trying to write a little 🌌 stay curious
today i bought bread for the first time in years i feared it for so long i couldn’t eat it without tears.
i hated its oil and its carbs and the way it clings under skin but mostly i hated how i loved it and how i might never be thin.
i was a sliver of the person i am lacking health, mind and vigor but today i’ve made my grief smaller and i have made myself bigger.
so i went to the bakery in the aching morning light they gave me a loaf and soft buns i ate one, my illness despite.
something as simple as bread made me so whole and so warm i hope you’re healing today, too and loving your human form.
the space between the stars is best undescribed
you look up, and there are seven sisters and bears and lions and swans a glittering mass of friends falling on each other and laughing
but you look with flawed flesh and you must know, in our age of science there are no sisters or bears or lions or swans you know the space is large cold infinite and we are all islands and we do not matter and there are no friends up there.
but if you see the seven sisters and the bears and lions and swans if you see them twinkle next to each other (and you do) then maybe you also know that space is small and that you can know the distance in miles and still feel their warmth unmeasurable.
the space between stars is best undescribed. go out now and look up and feel the intimate warmth of the cold and empty universe.
I always loved the snow. Growing up in a summery coastal town, it was only when I traveled that I ever got to see it. I fell in love with the way that it gathered so delicately on each tree bough, balanced so precisely on fenceposts and roof shingles. It robbed the world of color, but it paid back the theft in starkness, a blinding world of black and white.
I still love it, even now. The cold had long since stilled my limbs, and though it had hurt earlier, after hours being stuck in this tree well, I was blessedly numb. I watch with difficulty, as my eyelids are heavy now with snowflakes and fatigue, as the brilliant white sky lays more and more snow around my frostbitten body.
The silence is so heavy. I had never known that before today. It is a peaceful and welcome quiet. All I hear now is my slowing heartbeat and the gentle snowfall, a nearly imperceptible crackle of the tiniest pieces of ice.
My only regret is my closing eyes. I wish I could witness this snowstorm til the very end. But darkness bears down on me, and I fall asleep.
There was something ancient about her. I’d known it since we met in the forest. She said she was just like me, but in her black eyes, some force churned. I didn’t like standing too close to her, I feared I might get pulled into her gravity.
But I kept coming back to the clearing. She was always there, perched on a rock or dangling from the crook of a tree branch. Sometimes crouched on the ground, poking a bug with a stick. She never looked up at me. Just knew I was there. And we talked sometimes, me about my village and her about her animal and tree friends, but other times we just sat together.
As I grew, she did too, but I swear it’s only because she wanted to. Slowly, we talked less about my village. It upset her. And one day I looked up, and she was laughing greatly at some joke I’d said, and she was a woman.
Another day, I asked her if she was a witch. All trace of levity left her.
“Would it be so bad if I was?”
“No, not at all, just-“
“I’m not a witch as much as a bear is not a man-eating monster, or a rat is not a bothersome nuisance. Witch is what your people call things like me. I would not be a witch if there were no men to call me witch, just as a bear would not eat men if there were none, just as a rat would not bother men if there were none.”
She spoke low, but her voice was filled with that darkness. Mine was trembling in my response
“But I’m a man, and I don’t call you witch. I call you friend. I only asked out of curiosity. I’m sorry.”
Her face softened, and something warmer crept into the black of her. A purple, maybe.
“I know. But don’t you ever listen to them when they speak of witches. Or you will find this clearing bare forever.”
I only nodded, and we sat until sunset, and I returned home.
The people I returned to began to feel like the other world, like my time with her was the only true time spent. They spoke of bad weather, poor crop, and when they’d get around to the tavern. Sometimes, my family would ask if I would get married soon. Other times they demanded that I hurry up and pick a girl before the good ones are gone. The same way farmers talk about prize cows. It disgusted me.
It was one of these nights, of feeling wretched at the dinner table with my father and mother and siblings, worn from the work of the day and worn from their demands, that an idea flew through my mind, like a bird past a window. A bare streak of a thought. What if I left here to go with her?
It grew in me like a seed. The hike to the clearing made me lighter and lighter. We lay together, on a fresh autumn morning, when I told her.
“I hate them. I know why you live here, among nature. Your life must be so full,” I said to her wistfully.
A flash of green crept into her dark presence.
“It is.” She looked out over the valley, the trilling of birds and rustling of animals echoing faintly, the ripple of reddened treetops in the playful wind.
“Could I ever be like you?” I said longingly.
“You could.” She returned her gaze to mine, and I felt that old fear of being pulled into her, but this time as a desire.
“What must I do?”
“Nothing. In form and action, we are already the same. If you are not home among the village, but here, then you are already like me.”
She sighed, a deep blue spreading over her.
“I was once a girl in a village. Just like you were a boy in a village. But they didn’t want me. They called me a witch-spawn, and cast me into the wilderness. And in the leaving, in the walking through the woods on bare, bloodied feet, I didn’t die like they thought I might. The forest became my village. Do you understand?”
I nodded, slowly. I told her I had to prepare, and she understood, and bade me farewell.
Most would write a note, saying they left to explore or marry a girl in another town, but I knew it wouldn’t work. So I went home, and I told them a truth in the way they would understand it, face to face. That my long walks were to see a powerful witch, and that we had lain together, and that I was leaving forever.
My father struck me in the face. He and my mother both cursed my name, saying I was always a strange boy and they always had hoped I would die out in the woods. A useless second son who couldn’t even marry well, and now he’s saing he’s in love with a witch. My elder brother had the honor of throwing me out the door and into the mud, with nothing more than the clothes on my back.
And I was lighter for it.
I trodded, weighed down by rain and filth but carried by hope, down the road out of the village. I didn’t go to the clearing. I simply left the path, and delved into the untamed forest.
The morning snuck across the sky silently, turning the night into a heavy gray. Silty mud sucked at my boots, sharp branches tore at my coat. This was the trial.
I learned much in those days. That the forest was not just the flowers and the gentle things. It was the blisters on my hands, the cutting cold, the ruthless pursuance of the mountain lion that stalked me. But I did not starve. I did not die.
And the blackness spread from the seed in me, that was planted so long ago. It wasn’t simply black, but blended with the hues of everything. Like raven feathers, I was a void that shone with every beautiful and horrible thing in the forest.
At the end of my changing, I was at the clearing, and she was there. Looking upon her darkness, and my own now calling back to it, is the sweetest homecoming I will ever feel. A warm yellow glow enveloped us, and we went into our forest, hand in hand as witch-lovers.
not long ago now i was infected with a pattern. it spawned like a cancer why should i do it any other way?
just a little poison frog in a rainforest but soon it seeps into the water into my blood
i deserve only the hell i made when did it become a hell? did i burn these bridges? must i choke on this poison fire and call it breathing?
i don’t remember how to break a pattern. i wish the fire was clean and could wash off this hell.
(note: this is a sequel to Siren, more to come!)
While the crew often had their resting hours in the night, I kept the opposite schedule. After all, the seas were always most treacherous after the sun fell past the horizon. It made those who dwelt in the depths of trenches and old wrecks braver, more curious now that their darkness had infected the space above.
The sky was moonless and cloudless, and so gave the impression of being surrounded by thick, imposing black. Only the distant pinpricks of starlight and the glow of oil lanterns shimmering off the waves could be seen beyond the ship’s wooden body.
But in that black, I sensed them. The hulking, writhing presence of my kin. Keeping far below to not stir the water, but still close enough to listen to the song. Maybe bored, maybe restless.
The unfortunates on the night shift shuffled around tiredly, many clutching small mugs of coffee. If they knew of the numerous monstrosities that lurked below, they might perk up a bit. But they didn’t know, and they didn’t care to. That was my job.
Kielman came up the stairs to the quarterdeck, knocking on the railing to not startle me. Her face was pink from the chill breeze, but she hadn’t bothered to put on a jacket, just a woolen cap on her shaved head.
“Hey, Naya. Don’t let me distract ya. Only here to give you the winning from the bet.” She slipped a handful of coins into my pocket, the weight tilting my dress slightly askew. I gave her a toothy smile, and she returned it.
She remained there for a while, looking out into the black with me. I changed my sleepy lullaby to a human song I’d picked up years ago, one about picking flowers in the mountains.
“I like this one. Reminds me of home.” Kielman said brusquely.
I looked back at her and shrugged. Sometimes, we talked in this halted, mute way, especially on slow nights.
“Bet it’s the same to you as your songs are to me, seein’ as you’ve never seen mountains.”
I nod, slowly. I gesture down at the deceptively still water.
“They like it too?” She asked incredulously.
I nod again.
A hearty laugh. “Well I’ll be.”
I wave my hand through the air, mimicking the way the song’s notes swayed high and low.
“Yeah, like waves, I ‘spose.”
She copies my movement, and I catch sight of a scar, rippling messily from her wrist to her elbow. I look away, but she notices my noticing and rubs her hand over it.
“Got that lovely thing from one o’ them. Sharkturtle attack, before ships started hirin’ your ilk. Ain’t the biggest in the sea, but they’ll sure fuck you up and put enough holes in your hull to make it look like a strainer.”
If my tongue wasn’t busy with the song, I might’ve told her that I’d once had a sharkturtle as a companion, back when I still lived as a wild siren. I can imagine how it would paint the line between us deeper. In our comraderie in betting on a poor boy’s foolishness, maybe she, too, was starting to see me as a human. Maybe I was being too human.
Better that I sing my own unearthly music for the monsters below, not play with human songs and notions of nostalgia. Better they don’t forget I have that monstrous blood in me, even with a beautiful face and a sweet song to go with it.
As the silence stretches between us, in all that is brewing but unsayable, she pats my arm and turns to go.
“I’ll leave you to it, then.”
Some small string of kinship tugs on my heart. But my kin are the bodies below, the man-eaters and tentacled things, not the sailor walking forlornly back down to the deck.
in the well of the true self there lies a pool leftover from the ocean of creation.
my mother casts down the bucket and draws up a daughter not the one she wished for but this is not a wishing well.
my brother casts down the bucket and draws up a sister fierce companion and bitter rival bound as only blood can bind.
**the girl from school casts down the bucket ** and draws up a light of mirth **together we shine ** through tears and smiles and youth.
a boy casts down the bucket and draws up a heart it was his for as long as he held it but he forgot it in the forest.
but in small hours when the water is still and i echo with only breath and heartbeat **i sing with the infinite and unreachable depth ** of my mother ocean.
someone lived in my mirror a little girl bright and shallow gone like a gasp.
someone lives in my mirror she took the shape of a woman and stole away the little girl when i wasn’t looking.
someone lives in my mirror and her eyes have turned hateful echoes tearfully sung a lament for the little girl.
someone lives in my mirror standing steady dark and deep present like a pulse.
someone will live in my mirror and i know every detail about every version of herself she has ever been.
By the work of a single, flickering power line, in a single, violent night, the valley was crippled.
Each lovingly crafted shade of green, every hill that was whole with life and tossed by a playful breeze, had been either withered to its shadow-self or taken entirely. No birds sung in the trees. They were long since gone or dead. The sky a smear of brown, like a greasy old window, with an angry welt of a red sun. Once-golden hills scarred with jagged slashes of black, the rest smeared with ash.
The weight of such a devastation dragged on my shoulders like a yoke. Because it wasn’t just the animals that were silent. The people were, too. Every face painted with dirt, ash, and a grim acceptance. Some kind of loss wormed its way into everyone, even those lucky enough to have kept their homes and families intact.
Worse than the withered land and the disheartened people were the bottom barrel scum that was the looters. That first night, huddled in my bed with my sister, I heard them. No one in particular, just gunshots and screams. Someone lucky enough to have kept their home and family intact, suddenly and decidedly unlucky and unintact. I didn’t sleep, even with my dad sitting by the door with his shotgun. Neither did my sister.
Weeks passed of brown-sky days and gunshot nights. I went out once with a bandana wrapped around my face, and caught pieces of ash floating down from the sky. I pretended it was snow. It looked a little like snow, anyway.
But then, we drove out to the fireline, and any delusion was scrubbed clean from my mind.
Before, I’d only ever seen campfires and candlelight. Only know a fire that was tame, yellow, curiously innocent. This fire was red and jagged, like a torn page. This fire was one hundred feet tall, belching great lungfuls of smoke and ash. This fire was a great and feral beast. Shamelessly, I cried at the sight of it, tears tracking paths into the ash that had settled on my face in our short stint outside.
Years have passed now, and I still know in my bones the way that sunlight looks when there’s smoke in the air. When the wind whips through the trees a little too hard, I think of that single power line. That feral beast crawled into my chest and cauterized itself a hole to nest in, never to be forgotten.
He should have been told I wasn’t human. That was the worst part. But the crew found amusement in watching the fresh ones get all worked up over me.
The boy, whom I’d heard called Harrison or maybe Harold, was waxing the deck, his large eyes flitting over to me and then hastily back to the floor. I continued my song, closing my eyes to listen to it roll out over the waves, placating my kin who swam far below so our ship would sail to shore untouched.
When I concluded with one last lilting note, I turned to the captain, a greyed man with leathery skin from many a year aboard.
“The wind tells me a storm will stand between us tonight. I must rest my voice whilst we sail in sunlight.”
He only nodded. The captain, in his age, was superstitious against my kind. Remembered the days he and his men feared the song that now keeps them safe. Smart man.
I made my way down to the deck, where the foolish boy was daring to openly stare. He gripped his mop tightly, repeatedly swallowing as he seemed to be working up the nerve to speak. Thankfully, he was unsuccessful, and I made my way belowdecks in peace.
In the tiny mess hall, Kielman and O’Connell were playing some game of stabbing a knife between their fingers. They looked up at the clatter as I cracked open the saltwater barrel with my rations.
“Kid speak up yet? I got money on him screwin’ up the courage before the end of the voyage, you know.” said Kielman with a chuckle.
Even with our differences, most of the crewman weren’t so bad. Their humor was crude and they stunk like tobacco and alcohol, but as long as they had the good sense to mind their gazes and hands, we got along well enough.
“I would know, as my bet lays with yours. I predict he will become emboldened enough before nightfall.”
The door bangs open for none other than the foolish boy to stride in, face reddened and breathless. Kielman and O’Connell halt their knife game, stiffling their conversation at once.
“Uh. Um. Hello there. What’re you doing down here?” He sputters, then grimaces at his tactlessness.
I fix him with a sultry look, still standing over the open saltwater barrel. “I am fetching something to eat.“
“Of course, yeah. I, uh. I wanted to tell you something. If that’s alright.” He rubs the nape of his neck.
I wait, staring unblinkingly as he had earlier.
“I just, uh. I wanna tell you that I think you’re real pretty, and that I’d like to treat you to dinner or somethin’ next we dock.” His words come out in a single exhale, running together clumsily.
I sigh, turning my attention back to the saltwater barrel. I plunge my arms in, stirring the kelp as my clawed fingers search for slimy, tough skin.
“What’re you…”
With a splash, I pull a small squid from the forest of loose kelp, the thing still writhing in my grasp. Keeping my eyes locked with his, which now are filled with strained confusion instead of shy apprehension, I bite viscously into the head of it, its juices spurting out over my hands as it goes still.
“What do they call you, boy?” I say, licking the blue blood off my fingers one by one.
“Harrington.” He sqeaks.
“Do you know what I am now, Harrington?”
“You’re a siren.” His voice descends into a miserable whisper.
“That’s right, boy. Now, run along, back above deck, and ask those so-called friends of yours why they let you make such an ass of yourself these last few weeks.”
He turns and dashes right back out the door without another word while Kielman and O’Connell explode with laughter.