Sally loves the lines of each vacant shell
Broken exhibits A, B, and D
Of nature's love for
Geometric patterns.
Smooth sateen interior
Lifetime of being pushed around by the
Ugly tide everyone knew but never took seriously
Except Sally.
Sally saw the unpolished specimens that never sparkled
Yet stood out on the sand like
The sienna mark of a black widow.
In her bucket, flung; captured.
Sally saw the rivets of orange
Big blue's reciprocal aura
Conspiracy's origin to be Mars or even Venus.
Rust was only a color to her.
Feet scorched, podiatric anomaly,
For Sally searched waterbanks shoeless
To let her toes tell her where loook down
She knows they know better than her dehydrated mind.
Buckets of shards, each
Original & hand picked
She opens her back to the public
They adorn her ears with the nursery rhyme
Which straightens her in to the
Same lines as her collection, her friends
Until she is a flattened personality
A demanded stability
The rope of their favorite lifeguard, the anchor.
Sally's stand is where Sally stands
Smiling with no lift in the corners of her mouth
For she is the essence of her aquatic zombie friends
The orange, blue, grey lines
Imprinted on alien rhinestones.
And when tides come to console her
They too streak lines over her body
Blow her to 10 different seas
In one unruly ocean.
One piece of her lies under a rock
Another, the shore, then to the water's underbelly
Third, underneath mounds of wet slosh
Fourth, the lifeguard's boat
Fifth, A seagull's overalls
The last five smithereens of Sally
Lie on my dead grandmother's quilt.
And I love the lines of her vacant shells.
YOU ARE READING
what Beth told me ~ a collection
Poetrya collection of delicate poetry all concieved on the golden shoreline of bethany beach, delaware over the summer of 2022. though slightly nonsensical, I hope you can retrieve something from the waters like I did. sincerely, lemyn victoria
