To hear us sing is to know /your/ desire. The one you call captain, ruled by many longings, orders himself bound to the mast. Salt-cracked hands secure him. The prow’s a wedge to split the sea, carrying you toward /your/ fate: a role in /his/ story. /Your/ fellow sailors, doomed, eager to live and die as men do, seal /their/ ears with wax, seeking salvation in ignorance. What do you seek, o brave soul, with that beard you wear like armor?

Scholars, driven to categorize, to define, to master, sail to /their/ deaths on these rocks, wishing to know us, to understand these wings, blacksleek as ravens, to chart the chords of these songs, to make all knowledge /theirs/. (Forgive us, o sailor, you who even now hesitate, wax in hand, hearing this song on the wind. These mouths, neither bird nor human, struggle with /your/ language of possession. We are unowned, unowning.)

Men with bright eyes seek us out, hungry for these bodies, or the bodies they imagine. They assume these melodies are for them, as though these forms, thin and taut as bows; thick and sleek as seals; scarred or baby-soft, though nearly always scarred; as though this skin darker than you wear, o sailor, or lighter than the milk-white north; as though these cocks and cunts and many shapes beside; as though these soaring wings, hair and feathers, fingers and claws are /theirs/. They think they can claim all things, until sharp-toothed coral educates them.

And you. What do you seek, o sailor?

/Your/ captain claims the ship, as though the love of it is not held in common among the crew, as though the hold is not a kind of womb, and its codes of male companionship a rough blanket thrown over you. Why are you surprised, o hesitating one? Bird-eyes are keen, but we mean no cruelty. Some among us have been (re)birthed from ships and rough talk and masks we wore for others, for ourselves.

Know this, o brave soul: we sing not for the proud captain, nor any scholar or lecher, nor even for you. These polyphonies of surf and sun, of winedark depths and fickle sky, of families lost and families true, these anthems of hope to greet first light, and dirges for the lost, these songs are for the singers, for the joy of creation, or for no purpose at all, for music needs neither justification nor reason.

We sing, and balls of wax drop from /your/ hands—if they are hands and /yours/. The mast-bound captain screams the name that some parent thrust upon you. He thinks you in thrall to us, for he imagines this song is a promise, that it offers him a way home, or power, or vengeance upon /his/ enemies. We make no promises, o sailor, not even of safety. We do not command these waters, these shoals thick with sun-bleached bone. Here we roost to be far from the troubles of those who would force or claim or control us. But you are welcome here, o longing one. Fear not for that beard, the pitch of /your/ voice, the masks you have worn. Behold the power of these endless forms most beautiful, and know you can find a place among us. This sailor-shape, you may keep or change. Or did you think form is destiny? Did not sister Circe show you that some people are pigs? And some men are not men.

The one you call captain raves. You cast aside /your/ spear and dive. The sea greets you like a lover, inconstant, adoring. Stone and coral tear, but you, o brave soul, know fear and pass through it. You stagger up the beach, sun-blistered, bleeding, water caressing you like sunlit wings, and a smile you thought forever lost spreads wide. These voices swell, joining waves and wind, and we welcome you into the chorus, to sing of bodies and selves, of all they think unchangeable, of all that could be, o sister.