Sister
Newport Beach, CA
2019, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
How do I describe thee.
Colorful paintbrushes would despair at my eloquence, my word choices.
They only dribble, drivel out of my crusty mouth,
so unabashedly lopsided with a grin as I breath you in.
My sister, not sentient, but so alive, I feel a weird connection.
Both you and I have been walked on, pissed on, ruined by man.
Maybe it’s different.
Maybe comparing the struggles of one woman to another,
one microcosm of life to another’s is selfish.
You are my sister.
My real sister, the older one who shaved her head when a man broke her heart, weeps at the altar, the shrine I built for you.
She pulls a tissue from her front and wipes saliva on my skin, it’s cool.
She told me stories about you when we were young.
We used to believe you encompassed us, held us in place.
I still believe that,
even after the Latin language crumbled taking along with it ‘mare,’ or sea.
Man took your ‘a’, the last bond you had to femininity and made you ‘meer.’
Or at least in German. Or at least that’s what my friend told me last night as we watched a documentary and ate stale kale chips.
You and I, we were very similar, feeling the pulse
of life in our throat as we were approached by something unknown,
but I am just a girl.
You contain magnitudes, lives in lives in lives and what am I.
So when you rake your own beaches, trying to pull back the pieces,
figure out what is sanity, and finally rest,
but only find plastic cups and empty bags, know I’m sorry.
How much those words mean to you,
a bitter taste, the sea foam stinging my eyes, a reminder that you are there.
I learned how to let go of rationality, of control, from you.
So abandoning you now would be much less of a feat, and more of a defeat.
To abandon the sister, who at the same time is quite myself,
is likened to pouring acid on my skin.
Aphrodite’s bubbles would be blackened now if she arose,
the seafoam isn’t green,
and you cower because of man.
No.
I will not allow there to be another day where you feel the sting, wonder if water is really wet, and then drown in your sorrows.
Sister. I’m here with sonnets on sonnets on sonnets.
Find me, drifting in your current,
swallowing everything as I pass by,
letting you play lazily with my hair,
as I close my eyes-
either sun or humanity making my toes curl.
Reflection
Reflection
I have always felt a connection to the ocean, the sea, any body of vast open water. There’s something quite terrifying and beautiful about its size. I used to believe it was so infinite, but in my learning process about how we are ruining it, it has shrunken in size. I was going to write a poem entitled ‘mother’ showing how the ocean has always been a parental figure to me, but that felt wrong. I then realized the ocean is like a sister of mine. We have mirrored each other in ways that are straightforward, and in those too convoluted to convey in any other way besides poetry. That’s how I was inspired to write this poem, “Sister.” How cruel we have been to our sister, how disrespectful, how nonchalant we appear when she cries. Personifying her helped me connect, and I think will help many others as well. If we saw how human the ocean was, maybe we’d start to care more (as a society), although, we still do hate each other, so maybe it’s about empathy. In this poem, I am trying to be a voice for the ocean, screaming out the struggles and fatigue of this entity that really just wants to be left alone. It is so important that we continue to educate people about the ocean, that we continue to spread the message and continue to put education at the forefront of our society. If we don’t, we won’t only be losing an important resource, but a friend—a sister, the one who is always there for you, and will never share your secrets.