CELESTYNA CELESTYNA B ROZE K @ G MAIL.COM
.
BROZEK CELESTYNA B ROZEK.COM
T H E V E R S O O F T H E T I T LE LEAF the sun skipping down my ramshackle head, stumbling in the darkened streets studded with missing cobblestones like the verso of a wedding ring, the clouds they make no noise scudding to the scene baskets full of happiness rise like loaves of leavened bread loosely dusted with linen rags, they all carry their happiness separate, they have emotions in jars like we do spices, and they too leave them upon racks labeled with paste paper and names drawn in ink and little lids muted by layers of sweet kitchen dust. dust is what the clouds shake off their little cloud feet when at last they settle into little nests of sky, vortexes tousled by the glib fingers of the wind rewriting its memoirs for the thousandth time. it is the season for selkies. it is the season to run drunk on ebony beaches, and find the crumpled pelts like furry seaweed, like misshapen beasts, and in your dreams be haunted by the skin of something so fine something you did not see, a not-being that is more being than actual being. this is the fate - to carry emptiness always knowing it was once filled with heaven and earth. these women and men you may know them by this: their lashes are short and dense and soft, and their lips are either colorless or darker than chocolate. their skin has the moistness of the sea, and their eyes glitter with a thick layer of tears. and they smell like salt and wind, like windy salt, salty wind, sindy walt was a girl i once dated in high school. she was sweet, but i could never imagine her as a grown woman, only as a child - this i could see clearly, blond and buoyant, dashing through a sky splashed with reveries and colored by nostalgia, the greener than green grass biting her feet with love and promises. it is uncomfortable, not comfortable, to look at a selkie. it is like seeing something that is not supposed to be seen, like the tears of your father, the death of a child, the foundering of a grand ship, a blood green pepper stuck in a rampant smile, the raw bone of a broken arm, the soul hesitating before fleeing the body, a woman spilling wine on a white wedding dress.
why do they come, the selkies? i know exactly why. they come to lose themselves-//-to loose themselves. they come because the water becomes wearisome. imagine moving always through water then swimming through air. when I see a selkie, i imagine moving always through air, then swimming through water. the self shedding the self, skin upon skin, salt upon wind, losing, so much losing to loose, membranes removed like fences torn down - hi salt on bare wound, you are exquisite.