The Secret to being a Dragon

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Let me tell you something about the ocean

that not many people know.

About the first symbiosis between

the first girl and the first saltwater body.

In the beginning, the ocean was lonely

and so she created a fifteen-year-old girl

(or was it the other way around?)

and she created a whole mess of other stuff too,

which she now considers a juvenile

and slightly embarrassing mistake,

like podcasts and presidents and interest rates.

But fifteen-year-old girls are all that matter.

That’s the only time it works.

Think about it; at fifteen you’re not actually a girl

(much less a person, the audacity)

you’re a girl-shaped puncture wound,

a girl-shaped ravine,

a girl-shaped throatlump,

a girl-shaped scream.

And the ocean is the only thing big enough

to fill all that negative space of fifteen

with saltwater and corals and plankton

and shipwrecks down in the saltdark deep.

In the ocean you can be angry

or you can be alive, but never both.

The ocean has no use for anger.

If you stay angry you’ll fill up your lungs

with seaweed, grow barnacles

in the hollows of your cheeks.

You can live comfortably as shaking fists

and trembling teeth for three to seven business days

(which is the amount of time it’ll take you to die)

or sometimes you even last a year and a day

depending on which kind of story it is

and whether or not the fae are involved.

But staying angry is your choice

and the ocean does more than most

letting you keep your anger and nurse it

all the way to a saltsoft sandy grave.

But being angry in the ocean

doesn’t do you or her much good,

except that some lucky yellowtail

or a sharp-eyed squid gets a mediocre meal

once you’ve curled up into a seductive

devour-me pose on the seabed floor.

But maybe you fall into the ocean and forget

how to be angry, or maybe you remember

but you look around at the deepsea dogfish

chasing ephemeral tails and the gulperfish

with maws like sunken sails and you think

well what’s the fucking point of anger anyway?

When that happens, when a girl and an ocean

and loneliness and anger (or lack thereof)

all line up perfectly like shots on a bar,

or rocks orbiting a dying star,

well then that’s how the ocean falls in love

and that’s how you turn into me.

You get a tail the size of the Atlantic, sticky

bubblegum-blue scales, hurricane-Katrina wings,

gutsharp teeth. And you get to vomit

up that lump that’s been stuck in your throat

since forever, since fifteen, because no one down here

gives a shit about your screams.

And if you have to ask what I am

then you haven’t been listening

and this is probably too primal for you anyway,

too Grendel too Smaug too Hydra too Quetzalcoatl,

and we both know that phallic sword

in your hand doesn’t make you St. George.

So here’s how the end of this story will go.

It’s late and I've got another appointment

on another current with another wannabe

knight who thinks I need slaying

or penetrating or debating or whatever

it is your monkey hormones believe

will finally make you feel like a man.

Like you’ve got anything I want

or anything I need or anything

that could impress eternity.

I have a seasalt lover waiting at home

with whale bone dinner and oceanic trench

thighs and a hydrostatic pressure kiss

that would liquify your primate mind.

Did you know the ocean has a name

that’s older than the sound of time?

She’s a lot more forgiving than me

and she’ll whisper it to you

if you go down enough into her deep.

So come here, come closer, don’t worry

about the next lines.

That’s not water in your lungs,

that’s not tearing in your spine.

It’s just the taste of victory.

There are ghosts down here to flatter you

into believing you’re something interesting,

and isn’t that all you ever wanted in life?

[Editor’s Note: Publication of this poem was made possible by a donation from Kat Jones during our annual Kickstarter.]

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