Ambulance for the Selkie

ELIZA C. WALTON

The day I remembered I came from the sea, I was sitting at my kitchen table, mulling.

My cat was a kitten then. She shredded the cotton drapes I made for my living room window. (I do all my living there. It’s a studio apartment.) Bored, hungry, she ate bits of floor, batted a small, spongy, red ball.

That morning she pawed her toy toward me. It rolled along the linoleum, wobbling in the creases where the joins came unglued and shuddering on tiny teeth marks, right up the table leg, hugged the underhang, mounted the flat top, approached my elbow—planted at a right angle—navigated those intersecting bones, then my wrist, and stopped on my pointer knuckle.

Below, I heard a gull cry. I raised my finger high. Watched the red ball spin.