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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
7 Jul 2025

i and màmá, two moons, two eclipsed suns.
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In this episode of Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons SFF criticism podcast, Dan Hartland speaks with reviewers and critics Rachel Cordasco and Will McMahon about science fiction in translation.
Friday: BUG by Giacomo Sartori, translated by Frederika Randall 
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