Blood in the Water
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
They always smell it first.
Not the wound itself,
but the weakness—
the way pain ripples,
the way silence leaks.
The ocean stills.
Then the shadows start circling.
One opens the skin,
and the others arrive on instinct.
A frenzy of righteousness,
of teeth disguised as justice.
Each convinced they are feeding on guilt,
never noticing it’s mercy that bleeds.
The water thrashes red.
They tear pieces of my name from the current,
rip history into ribbons,
devour the story
until even I start to forget
what was true.
The sea sings with them—
a chorus of hunger,
a hymn of harm repeated through generations.
They are not monsters.
They are just people who learned
to love the taste of someone else’s ruin.
And yet—
when the waves still,
when their bellies are full
and their consciences thin,
something remains.
A ribcage.
A spine.
A single hand reaching through the foam,
pale and defiant,
refusing to sink.
Because I have learned
how to survive the feeding.
I have learned
how to swim with skeletons.
I have learned
that even when there’s blood in the water,
the body fights to surface.
And when the tide carries me back—
ragged, gleaming, half-ghost but alive—
I look at the moonlit ocean and whisper,
“I am still here.”
They will come again.
They always do.
But I will not hide the wound.
Let them smell it.
Let them swarm.
They can take what they want—
I am the part they cannot swallow.
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