The Life that Grows on the Rocks

She stood by the sea, expecting to say nothing more
But her mother pried and pried, pecking away at her will
To keep quiet; like the seagulls in the faded corners of her vision
who drove clams into
the rocks

Waiting for them to break.

So, looking straight ahead, she spoke; 
her lovely, young voice immediately taken up by the wind, lost to the 
World’s ears.
But she had spoken, nonetheless

When I say goodbye, the sea won’t change me the way you have tried to.
It will take me, hold me, suffocate
The air that ever would have been wasted

In begging, in lying just to satisfy.

She felt every elemental splinter under the callous skin of her feet. She felt the fight to stabilize herself on the rocks, and 

the life which she squashed, the mollusk and the algae and
         then felt nothing at all

Her body, deep under the ocean--it will finally tell the truth.