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Selkie Baby by Laura Warner


You like the tips of your 
fingers and tongue to touch 
on the barely there. 
Close your eyes and imagine
a selkie baby slips from your hand.

You’re at my feet, soles touching,

a lit cigarette between your fingers – 

at its tip, smoky jellyfish swim

downward – their tendrils

twist upward 

and upward. 


I am submerged –

the air is salty, 

my body’s raw follicles

sting, but – 

Shaven labia mimic the mythic.


Your voice 

is a noise underwater

Selkie, Baby –


I will slip from myself

like bubbles along a torso – 

like smoke from a lip –

like the smoke from your lip.


Let me be

the white curl

that licks at

your nostril, 

be the hair

that uncurls 

between your legs.


---

Laura Warner is a poet and a PhD student at the University of Exeter. Her research project, Uterine Poetics, explores lived experience of endometriosis through poetry and poetic approaches.  You can follow her and her work on Twitter: @warner_writer.

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