Inheritance of Water
between the sea inside
and the gull storm on my window
i bury her
pinnace scuttled ~
above me
whales like grey smutches
occlude the waters arms
comb jelly stretch
their fine globes like a net
over the moon
in the dark hulls of sturgeon
my grandmothers
close over like oysters
unread oceans swept
empty of coral
i know they must have mourned
then
their sadness swimming
lubricous
and insoluble
i have lived it
a heart swelling the glass
to shattering
the seagulls screaming
the salt displacing sea
Jai Michelle Louissen is a Scottish writer, living in the Netherlands. With an education in literature and in systemic therapy, she likes to write about trauma and loss infused with Scottish landscapes, biophillic portals into protoceltic animist cultures or encounters in nature closer to home. Published most recently in Poetry Scotland, Dust, Acropolis Journal, Dreich and The Black Cat Poetry Press and is the author of two chapbooks. Her second ‘the weight of vapour’ was published in 2024 She is the EIC of a literary journal, The Winged Moon.