If I could write your story, then you’d leave me for a whale’s tail,
your smile emerging from their splashes. A bicycle ride away,
your home beside the sand paths. In Nebraska, we lived a quiet
life: spring mornings by the farmer’s market, homemade vases
honeyed by buttercups, the same faces fluttering by our walks.
At first, I thought you cherished our small town. No scuba diving
adventures. No whirlpool danger signs—just fixing the birdhouse
on Monday and shopping for windchimes. When we received mail
stamped with a turtle shell, your eyes fluttered like falling stars
while reading each letter. That night, I watched dusk roll across
the grass field outback. You were born from this land of drought,
restless for the ocean. You wanted to rescue sea stories on their last
heartbeat, even at the risk of drowning. I know I said I’m afraid
of shark jaws or lanternfish myths, but when I’m old enough,
I’ll buy you a plane ticket to the Pacific. You’re a marine biologist,
I’ll hear you laugh out seafoam in our calls. How light scatters
out of ghost shrimp, visible green bodies. So let us separate. Grieve
for once. Forget these weekends of stargazing, believing we are telescopes
rather than astronauts. When you swim by heatwaves, coral bleaching,
fish skeletons, I promise you’ll dig out oyster pearls, deep sea mysteries—
discover truth lost to shipwrecks. In the future, I hope you can fly
to the exoplanet, still orbiting, still remembering life strung between
the Milky Way and Midwestern sun.
This poem first appeared in the Gaithersburg Book Festival Poetry Contest Gallery.
—
Chelsea Zhu is a teen writer and environmental advocate from Maryland. Chelsea loves summer, stargazing, and skiing.
