Self-Portrait as Seashell
A poem
I flinch at your fingers displacing sand packed
inside the whorl of a whelk. Nearby, we hear
asthmatic breaths of a boy’s chest that swells
when his bucket overflows with seashells:
he huffs back to his parents, kicking
with sandals full of salt that clot his soles.
The pelicans dig webbed feet into silt, bellow
out an ocean of hoarse calls, and take flight
to crown nearby carcasses: blooms of cold-
blooded jellyfish washed up in a current
too rough for their softness. We are both made
of mostly water. Did you know the cannonball
jellyfish are harmless? you ask, probing
and digging into their deflated heads. But,
if I were submerged in dirt-blue water, vision
blurred, how could I decipher the sea wasp jelly
from those? I couldn’t. So, when you reach down
to grab a conch, scooping out the sand belly once
more, violating the last bit left before pressing
it to my ear, and command me, Listen, I do.
