Salt

She brought memories of the ocean

coated on her teeth,

which I traced with my tongue,

and I cried in the joy of

remembering my fins

I could tell she wanted to coax

me back, through rocks on the cove,

her gills twitching nervously,

and I let my sand-flecked fingers

pick a shell from her hair and said, 

“I will return, but first I must deliver the land from madness.”

She closed her eyes and smiled

When I came back, lit by the moon and outlined by fire,

with the king’s head clutched in my hand 

and the trident of deliverance in the other,

I sank into the froth and felt the bubbles 

prickle against my skin,

each holding the promise of a kiss.

The depths of the nights and the tyrants.

Jaime Dear (they/them) is a cartoonist, zinester, and sometimes poet from Ohio. You can find their other work at potatofuzz.itch.io or in the comic anthologies Comrade Himbo (POMEpress) and When I Was Me: Moments of Gender Euphoria (Quindrie Press).