Kate Sweeney

Low Tide

my daughter woke at 4am,
sweaty and mumbling from a dream
about giving birth to a baby made entirely
of sand. her hair trapped against her face
like a nesting dove, wildfire tumbling from a
new waking mouth. I imagine the
fluid bones of an earth child
ripping a chasm in her lower body,
half a person left growing from the edge of sea,
drip castles destroyed by repeating waves,
the boom and hiss.

Some days it’s like this. her feral center
reaching for me from the fertile void. Maybe
the umbilical cord in my freezer is to blame.
I know of some not too distant day, when
someone will attempt to suppress her
brackish power, force her to map a route
where the only clean option is God.
An answer I neither understand nor can help with.

the evidence is everywhere,
they will say.
And she will be faced
with the possibility
that she alone
is not
proof enough-----------