I was born as lightning struck the Atlantic, during an unseasonable January thunderstorm. The whole thing had groupers and houndfish cocking their heads to the side in unfamiliar motions. The ocean was sky blue and clear, but the sky was choppy with swells. Raindrops fell from the sea into the clouds. The Sargasso Sea paused its churning, leaving seaweed suspended without shores. Eel larvae hatched all at once and bathed in the stillness as turtle hatchlings poked their heads above the waves to watch. The sea sang siren songs to Ayacayia, who delivered me to my mermother. The bottle-nosed friends of my father gathered round to congratulate and speed along the loggerhead who bore me to the shore.
I landed on the islands among sea biscuits and beach glass. My sargassum hair held mermaids’ purses and unborn sharks. My skin sparkled with the pink sand that held centuries of periwinkle dust. Queen conchs and horse conchs alike exploded with the pink noise of the oceans they held, sending coral-colored stars into the sky. As the dawn came, yellow hibiscus opened gently, turning orange and deepening into red before falling into the ocean, in a microcosmic mimicry of the sun. Inland, you could hear potcakes howling at the strangeness of the winterstorm and roosters who could no longer tell the time of day. Hermit crabs came together to perform a junkanoo, which raised me from my sleep. I had always been able to swim, but it was time to begin to leave footprints in the sand.