Sarah

 

She was born beneath the stars,
cold October rolling on,
gooey, veined and left
on a basin of seafloor.

Few sisters they were stolen
by shrimps and polychaetes,
consumed before calcium carbonate
had a chance to become armoured hair.

"It lives here no less now
than it happened to back then,"
But a whisper from the cockleshell,
between grasses, hammered shut,

glued at all the edges,
battered at the sides
a frame only meant
for shattering with a fist.

The kind of jagged crack
that leaves shards that quake the phalanx.
There's no intention to let
that mollusc foot weave out.

At best she'll shake the frame,
the pearly outside wave
a recognition that somehow
something is still alive.