Selkie Trap

Her coat a skin she could shrug off, 
hang in the cramped closet, forget. 
Her skin gently peeled off her smooth 
shoulders and hidden. Her fur ripped  
from her bones and buried, she  
laid bare, righted to standing, placed 
in the house, tending the children,  
one eye on the eldest, the other on  
ones not yet born, her babies’ chains  
pinning her to the earth, dirt not her 
habitat, soil her penance, punishment.  
In the old story, her own child reveals 
the location of the stolen coat, skin,  
means of escape. Without a word,
she slinks back into her pelt protection  
and rushes down sand dunes toward  
the beach, saltwater lapping toes  
that are now flippers, legs and hips and  
breasts released into a solid, furred body,  
slick and strong, eyes dark as night rain,  
teeth sharp.      But this is no fairy tale,  
rather the story of a closet nailed shut,  
fur secreted away, lovely pelt burned  
in a garden bonfire. This is the story  
of a woman trapped ashore with a man  
who stole her best thing, captured her,  
this a tale of children she loved but did not  
want, a life wracked and rent wild with  
so much air she could not take in breath. 

JESSICA BARKSDALE

Jessica Barksdale’s sixteenth novel, What the Moon Did, was published in February 2023 and her second poetry collection, Grim Honey, in 2021. She teaches fiction for the UCLA Extension and in the online MFA program for Southern New Hampshire University. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.