Blue Forgiveness
Albany, CA
2019, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
l. When Mother says love, it translates to this:
the world rippling salty within my palm or
the Bay curdling beneath the bridge.
Hot, sticky summers when blue encompassed
our bodies till we bled whale songs that
soaked in the glowing abyss.
Everything dancing: pale sky then coral
then the ocean and her flaccid arms lacing
through our hair. Salted eternity welcoming us
in waves. Our undoing, our creation, our
great blue world.
II. But these nights Mother cries and I do
not know why. The voice on the radio is
sheathed in sand, dirt, and black. Plastic
burns through the speaker phones and black
goo laps around our door. Somewhere, a
stingray whitens dead and inglorious under
pacific sun. Somewhere, grocery bags are
falling like skinned angels onto the slow bodies
of sea turtles. Somewhere, a boy’s mouth is
corroding with cardboard, his cheek is tacked
with candy wrappers. His chest is submerged
in gray, floating with the cigarettes and the
packing papers and all the things we cannot keep.
III. The mornings bring no light. The radio
hums a new myth in which the ending is all
red and blue and dead and alive. The rancid
smell of salt and carcasses bloody
through every window.
Acid flecks into our lungs and the sky is
bleached over the ocean’s dry, white,
tongue. Somewhere, a polar bear
salivates one last time. Somewhere,
an iceberg is cut into sea, falling and
falling and falling.
IV. But one morning, Mother wipes her tears.
One morning, the darkness recedes and
the silhouette of a single gull rises
against the blaring light. Our neighbours
wade out of the water damp with
spillage, hands dangling with regret. I bend
over the water and see my own face
in the blue. My hands become their hands
and their hands become a flame. Together,
we sing destruction into matchsticks
and eviscerate the braids of smoke and
ashes. Together, we hallow every fish
in the sea as they skip, hop, and dance.
They glisten in the azure. Their fins
oscillate with chromatic colors and
our palms are marked with awe. The sky is
gilded with gold: it is watching our every
move.
WHEN SHE WOKE UP
the body found itself like this / soaring / winged with cerulean / the size of the universe before the universe had a name / limbs spilling from the sun / a secret between God’s teeth / frothing with danger and beauty / crystalline within a child’s palm / touched and taken / in every direction / into every hungry mouth and / every craving eye / sought like the daughter of a sovereign king / the painting to hang on a wall / and forget
and so the body forgot like this / mouth black with bullets / hair wrung with oil / when she spoke / her teeth crumbled like newspapers / acid strung from limb to sinew / medicine tablets / last month’s Chinese / the party cups / the most salient remnants of her / her children tampered and grayed and bleached / she roars over our rooftops / her rain is acrid and leaks onto our carpets / she is sunken darkness / she is star-crossed warning / she is no longer ours until
the body remembers like this / long blue claws purging the black out rib by broken rib / revelations wet and bloody / and no one can swallow her like she swallows herself / her eyes the sun’s fiercest blessing / she can never die / yet no one forgives like forgiveness herself / she carves our names out one last time / we try to find her between our rust-stained hands / our silhouettes arch over her moribund back / our voices clean / we seek / we seek / we seek / we rise.
Reflection
Reflection
As a very quiet person who typically likes to keep to herself, I never imagined I would be able to do anything too bold or outspoken about climate change, though I cared very much about it. Writing this project out and thinking it through, I gained motivation for taking action through art. I realized that everyone has their own path in terms of improving our planet. In these writings, I try to characterize the ocean as something closer to us than it seems. I tried to emphasize both the beauty and the terror that the ocean holds, and how its traits can be very meaningful for us. By doing this, I hoped to create a sense of urgency yet hope about the conditions of our ocean and our planet. Since problems such as climate change often feel avoidable for many people, framing it in terms of personal poetic language could make it feel closer and more dire to the reader. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and less than a mile from the coast. Though the ocean is physically close to me, I have always felt it distant, immortal, and indifferent to me. Whenever I looked at it, I just felt so powerless. However, none of this was true. When writing these poems, I got to explore what the ocean truly meant to me, all the life it held, and how close we were actually held together. With this in mind, I hope my new appreciation and care for the ocean motivate me to take more proactive action wherever I can. The ocean is in a pressing predicament, and my action is vital to its survival.