I am the mother of fish and beasts
And tonight I sit with my children’s ghosts
Drinking salt water
Instead of invisible wine
From long ago dried-out vineyards.
So many return to my shores:
The ground sloth, with his long tongue
Twisted like a rose-colored eel
The mammoth, draped in fur like Spanish moss
Still revered by the Tungusic people
As the first teacher
Pronghorn, the white stripes around her neck
Showing the path of near extinction
Like a dry riverbed
The herds of camelops
Whose ancestors crossed from the Arizona desert
Their fatty humps swaying
As they walked, dignified
Into oblivion.
I bleed at sunrise for them all
And hold the halophilic bacteria,
The red-makers,
Tight in my diminishing waters
One of my last remaining offspring
Eating away the salt of my grief.
I am close to giving up, you see
But I was lost once before
And resurrected
By my sisters, the three rivers
Jordan, Weber, and Bear
Love is our lifeblood.
Perhaps I’ll breathe anew

And brine shrimp will once more
Build their tiny worlds
Made of light
And excrement
The murmurations of vitality
May still return to my banks
I may yet grow pregnant
With unlikely life
Stranger things have happened.
But this is the time of great withdrawal
Of deep water dreaming
Look into your own receding depths
Don’t you see your
Furrowed faces reflected
On what is left of my surface?
Find the child in your voice
Sing for my survival
For our braided continuation
Shout, dance, rage,
Let your hands and feet be sanctified
By my dust
Speak the things left unspoken
Twist yourself into shapes
Previously unimaginable
Add the salt of your tears
To my own
Let us grieve together
For all that was lost
Remember the water
Our shared blood
Learn from me
And perhaps we both
May redraw the maps
of our living bodies
Heal our withered hearts
And live again.

Masha Shukovich (she/they) is a shapeshifting humanimal who lives, dreams, writes, and celebrates the ancestors of water, land, and blood along the shores of the Great Salt Lake.