In the morning I remember what you've told me

by helen jenks

At the edge of a cliff I find myself in a puddle in a puddle which could look like an ocean if I crouch down enough if I put my cheek against the land and rest for a while if I stretch out my tongue and taste the salt-brine and wind and close my eyes fall off the edge of a cliff into a puddle of an ocean that has been named for its eels and its whales though the name derives from the land where I am both resting and running the land whose cliff has thrown me into the sea the land on whose ground I have built a home hooting and hollering and falling all the way down into the wavebreak where everything waits the eels the whales the snake which winds itself around the world and eats and eats and eats without resentment for the serpent is the ocean and the puddle and the cliff and the name of all the sea where everything is hungry here in this puddle in this place and just as the land took its name I will take mine turn back from the coastline turn back to the table and put down all these slimy-scaled beautiful things I have found for you in such a peculiar puddle of a place wet-haired dripping saltwater wave after wave after wave

and when you smile and ask me where I’ve been I know you won’t believe me when I tell you that you were there too, floating above the whale-elk and wind, telling me It’s okay to let go.

So I do.

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Helen Jenks is a poet from Dublin, bumbling history student, and avid knitter who writes of memory and myth, among other things. Her work has been published in various journals across Ireland, the UK, and the US, and she acts as the editor of The Madrigal, an Irish poetry publication focused on work that is emotive, sincere, and familiar.