Under my ribs it is cloudy and windy and everything is green and pounding. When I’m anxious, I can’t hear myself over the tide. There’s flocks of birds on the shoreline. And one of the birds is dead, like the gull I saw on the beach on Sunday, its neck craned backwards and eyes open, but most of them are happy. A few peck at my bedframe when I try to sleep at night. 

This summer I have caught myself being an inverse mermaid: too full of salt water instead of being surrounded by it. Sweat rendering my hair briney, the split ends the ethereal kind of prehistoric. Picking algal nail polish off with my teeth before it dries. I wear a kelpy skirt and want to dye my hair red again. When sand gets stuck under my fingernails, I leave it there for the day, but always pick it out before I go to bed. I do this to make sure that when the gulls come at night, I have something to give them, a few spare grains to put under their hooked feet.