Seashell
Brigitte Winter
I search for you between your legs,
my fingers two mermaids slipping,
slipping into the salty depths
of you
until we surface to
the shriek of gulls
and float together
in the weightless space
between flight
and falling.
After,
back at the table,
your husband makes the old joke
about women and restrooms.
He doesn’t know
that if he held you to his ear
like a seashell,
he would hear waves breaking,
the faint flapping of wings.
About the author
Brigitte Winter is a writer, photographer, and game designer based in Maryland. She is also a cofounder of Scryptid Games, and the executive director of Young Playwrights’ Theater, a Washington D.C.-based company that inspires young people to realize the power of their voices through storytelling. The capacity of storytelling to connect, inspire, and incite is central to Brigitte’s art and her activism. She consumes and creates stories and games that are queer, feminist, intimate, and deliciously weird. Find her at brigittewinter.com, and @bwinterose across social.
Brigitte moved to Baltimore in 2001 and lived within and just outside of the city until moving to Columbia in 2017.