Julie Bustamante, The Butterfly Effect. Acrylic on canvas, 2023

 

By Amelie Sullivan

 

In windswept lands, a tale began,

Of a selkie fair, her life unplanned.

 

Born of sea, with an angels heart,

Yet trapped on land, where sorrows start.

 

She once swam with glee, in the salty sea,

Where the ocean’s love would always be free.

 

Her enchanting cloak, of sealskin fine,

Enchanted all whom she passed by.

 

But alas, on the darkest night of the year,

She wandered too far, her home not near.

 

And one human man, with eyes so dull,

Captured her sealskin cloak, running away cold.

 

With tears in her eyes, she pleaded and pled,

For the ocean’s embrace, her heart now bled.

 

But the man, consumed by greed’s embrace,

Sold her beautiful coat to a far away place.

 

Oh, the ocean roared, with anger and might,

As the waves crashed ashore, to claim their right.

 

With thunderous swells, it sought to reclaim,

The wayward selkie, lost in her pain.

 

Yet on the land, she wept all alone,

Her cry which echoed, into the unknown.

 

The seagulls stood and watched the young selkie

As she cried and cried, downcast and miserable.

 

And so, in the darkness, she made a vow,

To find her stolen cloak; to escape somehow.

 

Through fields and forests, she tirelessly roamed,

Fueled purely by the desire to go back home.

 

After years and years with no result,

The Selkies’ golden heart finally broke.

 

And she began her search to find the man

The one who began this dreaded dance.

 

At last, by a moonlit shore, she stood,

Where the waves crashed and played, as they would.

 

And there, on the horizon, a sight so damned,

Sat the weakened man laying in the sand.

 

With murderous eyes, and trembling hands,

She walked slowly towards the dying man.

 

Preparing herself, ready to call on the sea

As the selkie unleashed a horrendous spell on thee.

 

In lethal splendor, she watched the man,

As the ocean claimed him, with its deadly command.

 

She saw as he struggled against the tide

Now knowing what it felt like to be put to the side.

 

There the once young selkie stood

Feeling guilty but somehow cured.

 

She walked into the salty sea after the man

To be reborn again as the daughter of the sea and sand.