Cowrie

Tropical waters fling abandoned rooms onto hot sand. The closer the moon
moves toward the sea, the farther the toss.

Once upon a time twin eggs were tossed upon the shore. Two girls emerged
from speckled beginnings and learned to crawl. My daughters began to speak
and slowly lose that lustrous, soft sea life. Only traces in water words.

Marina cannot say her Rs. Her lips round, and car becomes cow, her sister Charlie becomes Chowlie.

A cowrie tumbles where land meets sea. Its oval turns over in the tide. A sad
mouth fills its underbelly, tiny hungry teeth.

My grandparents brought home necklaces from Polynesian travels. Tigers thickly strung. I loved the slow crunch they made when I stepped on them with hard shoes, that tender breaking.

Shamans once drew prophecy from the mouth of life-reckoning Durga, adorned the dead with her amulets.

Shells explode in the streets of inland cities. No guide to read the fragments.

Frozen patterns house living sound. Its animal shed, dead, the cowrie holds
echoes of its former life. Pours forth the shhhhhh-white noise of the sea.

The dead are swallowed, new life spat back.

Spirals in the sand trace back and back, to a fish that flung itself from the sea
onto land and began to crawl.

We venture out on fragile boats, shells to our ears, following the shurrings,
shushings, sibilant sea air.