A Constellation of Scars
Deirdre Parkes
The Seasalt girl came back the summer the clocks stopped. Even the kitchen one my granny had left behind, its red second hand ticking until it didn’t, hovering between breath and after. My mother said it was the battery. My father let the eggs boil too long. I watched the minute hand lean, undecided, like a body at the lip of a dive.
Outside, the tide was wrong. It started arriving early, like an anxious guest to a party. The shoreline showed more of itself. Rocks I had never seen before lifted their wet faces to the light. In the shallows, something moved through the silt.
We called her the Seasalt girl because we did not have another name for her—because naming is a net, and we had only so much rope. She swam through the bay, the way seals do. When she surfaced, she did not break the water so much as nudge it aside. A narrow head with hair slicked back; an eye that held the sky in a small, exact way.
My mother stopped cooking fish. “It’s not the same,” she said, though I hadn’t asked. She carried tomatoes in from the garden, red as the moon reaching up in the sun’s leaving. The house smelled of lemons and salt and something older, like a truth retold until it becomes a fable.
At night, the stopped clocks gathered darkness. I began to measure time by other means: the slow cooling of tea, the distance between my parents’ voices.
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There are myths about creatures that return when called, and myths about creatures that return when not. I did not call her. I stood at the edge of the water and let the sea wet my feet. The girl came close enough that I could see the fine map of scars along her body—tiny constellations, a history written without ink.
When she turned to leave, she did so with a grace that felt like forgiveness. The tide followed her, obedient once more. Behind me, the kitchen clock started again. One small click. Our lives measurable again.
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I did not go back inside.
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I watched the line she left in the water drift outwards, then vanish, as if some stories cannot be held.
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BIO
Deirdre Parkes is an Irish writer working across poetry, drama, and prose. She holds an MSt in Creative Writing from Oxford University and is currently completing a book-length memoir. Her work explores Irish women's hidden histories, intergenerational trauma and loss, and the narratives of power. Drawing on myth, folklore, and landscape, she uses a mix of poetry and prose to frame autobiographical material, valuing restraint over explanation. "A Constellation of Scars" is her first publication. Deirdre divides her time between Carlow and Warrenpoint, where she cares for her father, who is in late-stage dementia.
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WHY I WRITE
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In 2020, I woke from life-altering surgery into a world that had suddenly gone quiet. While the rest of the world was pausing for a pandemic, my own clocks had already stopped in the isolation of a critical care ward.
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I have kept journals since I was a child, a habit born from a father who read to me before I had the words to understand him. But it wasn't until I returned home—to a body mapped with new scars and a father whose own memories were beginning to drift out to sea—that I realised writing was no longer a hobby. It was an act of salvage.
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In “A Constellation of Scars,” the Seasalt girl surfaces with a history written on her skin. I write because I am now a living archive. I write to bridge the gap between my father and the childhood memories he is losing, using my words to anchor us both to the shore before the tide takes the rest. In the moments I share with my father, time is no longer linear; it is measured by the cooling of tea or the distance between our voices.
Like the narrator in my story, I have learned that naming is a net, and sometimes we only have so much rope. I write because I must decide what to catch and what to let go. My writing is the 'one small click' that starts the clock again, allowing us—however briefly—to live in a world that is measurable once more.
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SOCIAL MEDIA
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Instagram: @deda2105
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