By Alina Y Liu, aged 16

You take me between your lips and hold

me there, quivering, on the brink of splitting

 

down the seams. I blush orange, the color of

the sunset over the ocean, green as algae, kelp

 

forests, blooming between my beak and my

mantle. You stroke your finger down my gills,

 

touch your nails to the undersides of my flesh

where I hide in my shell, the fragile matte

 

calcium carbonate of a promise, forgotten.

I am a relic, fossilized, the remains of life

 

lost, coiled around itself in death. I uncurl and

become soft, the roiling shades of tentacled

 

flight. I settle on coral and contort my body

until I am the shape of arms reaching out,

 

reaching for you. I turn to stone and sit cooling

in the currents, and when you breathe life into

 

my pores I swallow myself and bite my tongue

and rebuff the monster I could become, keep it

 

in my stomach, my hearts beating, trembling

thrice over with the saltwater-scent of you. Your

 

words curdle in my esophagus, and I choke you

down and lie still and drift and soon thereafter I

 

die.