Ruminations of the Rhine
Her Unsung Song
I was birthed in brine,
Sea salt stuffed into wounds.
My echo rings, singing rocks of the Rhine,
That solitary chorus, the siren Lorelei.
Atop harsh waves,
upon this rock,
These lyrics lock bait,
Sea-learned minds to my hook.
Poets trace my lyrics: Atwood, Plath,
Yet to reveal an untrodden path.
After my vengeance, inflicted bloodbath,
It was she that calmed this salty wrath.
Saline skinned, sounding Sappho’s sight:
‘And her light
Stretches over salt sea’
When I thought it was me, it was she.
In that moment of electric femininity,
She caught my cords in serendipity.
Melodies once spat through bitter breath
Rearranged in her vision, calling the beats in our breasts.
Silky lustre, that sanguine tiger’s eye,
Swept blush through a form left tongue-tied.
Of all the men I thought could please,
There was nothing quite like her sea-salt breeze.
Now you might have thought me fixed,
My love a relief to maiden-monster myth.
But we much too love to bathe in salt, writing verse,
Coloured in Sapphic violets, this so-called curse:
Saline skinned, sounding Sappho’s sight:
‘And her light
Stretches over salt sea’
When I thought it was me, it was she.
About the Creator
Lori Palmer-Tulley
Undergraduate at the University of Warwick in English Literature and French :)
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