SELKIE SORROWS, PART II

I must learn to walk alone, to not
feel pillowed by your words that
were my sun every day, every night, and

during our sacred space in between night and day.

You push me off this naked beach
where seagulls mock and cackle at
my incomplete, stumbling body. 

When I lingered inside your open
waters, I didn’t feel your power. I
didn’t grasp your beginning nor your end.
I would float, eyes closed, intoxicated
by your sensitivity and your scary

sine wave of feelings.

How can I not ask the impossible?
How can I stop loving the vast ocean?
How can I stand up straight and take
my first step without you in a world
that is a mere gray after seeing your colors?

Silke Feltz is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Oklahoma. As a vegan rhetorician, she studies food ethics. Her poetry has been published in Drunk Monkeys, Peeking Cat Poetry Anthology, andWriter: Craft & Context. In her spare time, Silke directs StreetKnits, a humanitarian knitting charity that provides knitwear to the homeless.