When they threw me into the sea,
a warm day in June,
I was seven.
Swam deep and met curious fish
which poked me
they had only seen drowned people that deep.
When I surfaced two years later
mother thought I looked like a cod
and wouldn’t let me into the house.
The other children teased me
when I sat on the steps dipping my head
into a sink bucket of sea water,
claiming that I could see my friend the mermaid.
Mother relented (they always do)
put me in a tub of water in the kitchen
where I grew up till the shadow of famine swept across the land,
then my siblings hungrily eyed me
while mother was sharpening a filleting knife.
Uncle Fredrick, who only lives on raw, soundless vegetables,
came to the rescue,
carried me back to the sea
where I have been ever since.