“Full Fathom five thy Father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.”
– From Shakespeare’s The Tempest
my grandmother grew up in Norway
surrounded by her sisters and
the thick forest that met cool
ocean water flowing in through
the fjord
water was everything to them
for fishing, bathing, drinking, for
exercise, companionship, for life
my grandmother was married off
away from the water to the geographical
center of another land
my grandmother had the opposite
of a sea change – her bones not turning
into coral, but to the crumbing dirt of the depression
there were no pearls from the sea that
replaced her eyes, no salt in her tears
as her sisters were nourished by the
sea, she was as dry as the North Dakota winds
that whistled through the stark prairie
I’m building a house by the water
a home where I can bathe in my
father’s ashes, where I can slowly
turn into algae that gets caught in
a goose’s feathers
a home where I can always feel
the same water on my skin as
my ancestors before me
where my children can always
be connected to each other
About the author:
Elizabeth Land Quant is a disabled, queer, autistic writer, a wife, and a mom to three very cool kids. She has a degree in the Classics and Political Science from St. Olaf College, and splits her time between Minneapolis, Minnesota and Hot Springs, Arkansas. Elizabeth has been published in The New York Times, Disability Acts, Unleash Press, Red Noise Collective, and The Manifest-Station, and is querying her humorous mystery novel with a queer, autistic protagonist.
Part of our Fall/Winter 2024 Issue. New stories, poems, and essays now through December 2024.
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Tangled Locks Journal 