Caul

The old man is not of the sea
but she is,
long ago he stole her coat of many feathers
her smooth selkie shift
she needs it to swim or fly, away from him,
from all of them
men who are not quite human

who forget as always why they steal
the magic caul
or why they hide it, always in darkness,
the unwanted twin,
they hide the light that danced on fetal skin
and doom is on them
they drown in their own ignorance

but she too is doomed, to search so sad
for second sight
the membrane that clung behind her ears
the veil of tears hung on a tree
like dead leaves after the fall
so many mixed metaphors:
how to pronounce this word met-em-psych-osis

he does not know, nor she, but together
they live the loss
of all things rent and torn from faces
- torturer's marks on a placental trace -
nowhere to swim back, to or from,
no coat and no Hellespont
not even this story, her search for grace