The waves are shaped by sirens
and the sea walls built to echo
silence.
Night swimming is as delicious
as it is dangerous – the salt on the tongue
welcomed like a Eucharist.
If you consume enough, it will bless
you with madness; too much, and it
preserves ugliness.
Your voice seems to swell in the waves
washing over, but it is only the swollen
sound of sharks sharpening fins.
On nights like this, I believe I could love
a merman, his movements under the
surface, so seductive, calculated.
The rocks appear to me like lighthouses,
calling me back when I stray
too far from their margins.
I ignore them and float further in,
feeling the cold clutter my veins,
the brine burn my lips – a margarita kiss
meant for the misbehaved.
Jessica Furtado is a poet, photographer, & owner of the popular Etsy shop All You Need is Pug, whose products have been featured in Fortune, Daily Mail, InTouch Magazine, FYI Pets, & Cesar’s Way, and whose shop was noted as an Etsy Featured Seller. Her work has previously been published under the pseudonym JJ Lynne, with photography and micro-poem collages appearing in CALYX, Muzzle, PANK, and The Brooklyn Quarterly. Her writing can be found in apt, Hobart, A Narrow Fellow, Rust + Moth, Spry, and Stirring, among others. Jessica is co-editor of poetry for the literary journal Paper Nautilus and works by day as an Early Childhood Literacy Librarian. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two rambunctious rescue dogs.
