Mermaid Spell
       

Your daughter will tell you she's a mermaid
and you won't disagree—every woman

is born into an ocean full of baits and hooks
and traps. Take her to river banks

and watch her braid water with her fingers.
You need her to transform mythical—

napping on coral and seducing lonely
sailors with her sexless body

only to drag them under and bind
them in seaweed. Tell her crushed pearls

make seductive blush, that garlands of sea flowers
will sprout from her hair. You need

her dreams so badly that sometimes you wake
with sea foam in your mouth.

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Copyright © 2020 Jenny Sadre-Orafai and Anne Champion All rights reserved
from Book of Levitations
Trembling Pillow Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission