The Sea of Mothers

I plunge in, head-first, briny waters sluicing across my body as I dive down, the song of the deep sea coursing through my veins. Glimmers of honeyed sunlight sparkle through the surface of the water, patterns of dragonfly wing and kingfisher feather, paths of light like skeins of gold reaching down into the depths below me. The water is as cool and smooth as silk as I dive further and further into the waiting, welcoming darkness. The gloom slowly and tenderly envelops me, and I slow to float in the depths of the water, gently spinning in the natal dark. 

Down here, I can hear them, The Mothers that stretch out wide and deep, far back and far forward, an endless body of women in the sea. I carry them in my blood as salty as the ocean waves, the memories of The Mothers that bore me, that carried us all through the ages. They swim around me, lithe and powerful, flowing with the currents that sweep the depths, that swirl and spin up to the surface and curl downwards again, a never-ending spiral of flow.

A chorus of  evanescent voices swells, haunting and hollowing, thrumming with the heavy power of blood and birth, lifting me, raising me, rushing me upwards, towards the surface of the sea, dappled in the pure sunlight. There, The Mothers splash and call and sing in the gentle waves that roll across the surface, a symphony of women; daughters, mothers, grandmothers, ever onwards, a weaving of lives and wisdom and deaths that span all the ages that have ever been and will ever be. This is the Sea of Mothers, an ocean of power that I will one day take my place in, for the daughters still to come.

I luxuriate in this vast ocean of women that buoy me upwards, holding me so strongly, so completely, salt spray kissing my lips, the swell lifting my body tenderly up and over, ripples and waves splashing against me, soaking into my skin, seeping into my salty blood that runs wild and free through my heart. I am one with The Sea of Mothers, their breath in my voice, their song in my chest, their dreams in my blood. I hear them all, The Mothers, and I let myself float upon their love.

© Elena Tornberg-Lennox 2023