mariposa
BY RACHEL INEZ MARSHALL
I wasn’t born. I was found.
In the thick of red tide, my mother
pushed me through lines
of dead silver fish,
sharks, and octopi
that rose in whispers
off moon-splashed coquina.
She rolled me into a tight cocoon
and hung me
on the ceiling
of a Christian family’s beach house.
Mira, vete a ser mariposa ya,
she told me,
then crawled back
into the ocean, and the waves stayed
a shade of Georgia clay
until someone
cut me down.
My new family hummed
of spinnerbait, honey and Magnolia,
chamomile calm
against a sunburn,
and gave me rabbit after rabbit,
which covered the backyard
in a coat of twitching snow.
One burst
into feathers the moment I
held it close. A storm surge
broke, foamed at the dunes, and though
the polite ones looked away,
women in their lawn chairs eyed me
from their driveways—I was
a sad breeze veiled
in seagrass. I dreamed
of the edges of a map
riddled with arrows—
my nameless place,
my unknown sea,
the wreckage that hides in me.
