I married sea glass ~ A poem by Rachel Burns

I married sea glass

Bean green and smooth in the hand
the taste of salt on my lips.
A gabble of gulls flocked white
as I walked with the tide
past shipwrecks, past the drowned.
Swam with bottlenose dolphins
and harbour seals
until the chains of the shipwrecks
caught in my hair
pulled me down
saltwater filled my lungs.
The drowned gathered to watch.
I held the bean green sea glass
like a hymn to a requiem mass.

Rachel Burns

Rachel Burns is published recently in Crannog, Poetry Salzburg Review, Ink, Sweat & Tears and is anthologised in #MeToo poetry anthology & Pale Fire, New Writing on the Moon. She was placed in poetry competitions Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize 2017, Primers Four and BBC Poetry Proms Competition 2019. She has a poetry pamphlet published December 2019 with Vane Women Press, ‘a girl in a blue dress’. She tweets as @RachelLBurnsme

Photo credit @janasabeth at http://www.unsplash.com