La ahogada más hermosa del mundo                                                                                                                                       Natasha Butler-Rahman

She washed up a few days ago,

A stillborn of the sea.

I woke to the feeling of deflation,

A release in the air around me, and,

I could see from my bedroom window— Her body, a relief map made of watercolor paper,

Shades of spirulina and plum oscillating through her

In tiny puddles of paint.

Her loose stitchings frayed at her joints and

She wore her skin less snug with each passing day.

Eventually, it laid around her,

A cornucopia for what remained

And they all feasted their eyes on her bones,

Which shone like a thousand perfect pearls

Laid out on molded velvet.

They thanked the sea for showing its greatest secret to us.

Everything had been so still

Before the briny wind around her

Grabbed everybody by their shoulders,

And shook them awake.

My mother felt her as a shot in the arm and

For the first time in years, rose from her rest

To admire the spectacle on the sand.

She pressed her ear to the woman’s chest

And she swore she could hear a swan song,

Or maybe just the hum of the ocean.

My father told me

She looked just like my mother when they first met

My father told me that he had dreamt that

It had been him,

Not the body, but the sea—

It had been him that had filled her with white-hot seafoam and sheer ink,

Him that had reached deep inside of her and twisted her into a breathless knot,

Him that had released her in one fluid motion

And

Moved onto the next, and there had been a next.

Everybody shot around theories that

She might have been a ballet dancer or

A pastry chef,

A schoolgirl

Or a honeymooner,

But I thought she had just been a very bad swimmer.

And I did not wish her to be more.