When I was a little girl, all my nightmares revolved around the open water. I would dream that my sisters and I had been kidnapped, and I had to swim across the North Sea to get them to safety, with the youngest on my back. The gigantic curves of sea serpents permeated the mists of my consciousness, rising out of the darkness in their incomprehensible magnitude.
My mum told me once that she took me to one of those mother and baby postnatal swimming classes at the local pool. While all the other mothers were throwing their giggling children into the air and dipping them gently back into the water, I clung to her so hard that she had little nail marks on her arms.
‘No.’ I said. ‘No.’
Issue 6
PELAGIC GRIP
Elle Brown is a writer from Newcastle with a master’s degree in Medieval Literature. Her poetry has been featured in The Projectionist’s Playground, The Cannon’s Mouth, Foxtrot Uniform, and Runcible Spoon. She also has a series of online nonfiction articles published with Society19.