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I am red-lipped
and you are naked and submerged.
My hair is sun soaked and dusk stained
brown lit to red like flame
and you are beautiful like a punch to the gut.
I am bent over,
gasping.
Beautiful like drowning
(how do you breathe down there, my nereid?
I struggle not to drown in the air
above you.)
You stare starfish eyed
and solemn
and I want to curl my tongue around your teeth
taste your insides
like glass and sand,
like saltwater.
But would you have me?
I am fierce but shysoft
witch queen and fey
and you are gold in the waves,
ocean stained.
I am wind coarse; touched only by star
and the wild.
When we kiss my lips shatter like bleeding glass
salt bloody
and I lick the drops that stain your chin.



Hester J. Rook is a Rhysling Award and Australian Shadows Award shortlisted poet and co-editor of Twisted Moon Magazine.  They are often found salt-scrunched on beaches, reading arcane tales and losing the moon in mugs of tea. Find Hester on Twitter @hesterjrook and read more poems and fiction at hesterjrook.com.
Current Issue
4 Dec 2023

“Ask me something only I would know.” You say this to your wife because you know you’re human. You can feel it in the familiar ache in your back, and the fear writhing in your guts. You feel it in the cold seeping into your bare feet from the kitchen floor. You know you’re real because you remember.
now, there is the shape...humanoid, but not / necessarily human
He came from a salt mine that used to be solid all the way through
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