The Pacific is Wine Pink
Gillian Daniels
In the January sunset, the Pacific is wine pink.
Foam races to my heels on the cold, white sand,
a dog running to see me once more.
The seagulls fly against California’s winter wind,
flapping in place.
I have been a mermaid here,
brined fish tail,
scalp caked with salt,
hands reaching for sand dollars.
I left to find real ones, ride bikes, sing to strangers.
I can’t go back home in the same way.
I would just be that greedy creature of air,
that gull flying in place
as the shore sighs over the surf,
an aged wine too salty to drink.
Gillian Daniels attended the 2011 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing Workshop and afterward left Cleveland, OH to move to Boston, MA. Since then, her work has appeared in Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet among others. She also writes reviews for Fantastic Stories of the Imagination. You can find her at gilliandaniels.com.