Sea Star
By Fiona Tinwei Lam
"Similar die-offs had occurred before, but never at this scale...the stars were blinking out."
— “A Starfish-Killing Disease Is Remaking the Oceans,” The Atlantic, January 2019.
A fleck of constellation
studded in a blank swathe of shore.
No fragments of mollusk,
no green tendrils. No trace
of your undersea universe
beyond the ocean’s shifting
border. I hover above you, ponder
your arrival. Do I imagine
your flinch as I wake you from stasis?
You freeze, rigid.
I gingerly lift and balance
your body between twigs,
reach water’s edge, flip you
right side up. A blurred wriggle—
descent in a blink.
Shallow waves wash over
impassive sand. Galaxies
of your sunflower kin dissolving
on reefs from Alaska to Mexico.
Go where the tide takes you, sea star.
What will be left?
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Wednesday felt like a Monday, and it was 90 degrees, so we spent most of the day indoors with the portable air conditioner running and I did thrilling things like laundry and vacuuming around talking to 2/3 of my good high school friends (which was awesome) and looking at my son's photos of gardens in Victoria, BC (which look awesome). We managed a walk in the afternoon without melting.
Cheryl and I watched Secret Invasion together, albeit in our own homes, and irritated me yet again for reasons anyone who knows me can probably guess, but it's only three more episodes and I suppose I need to follow it for connections to The Marvels. Now we're watching more of guilty pleasure The Other Two. Sea stars from the relative cool of Seahurst Beach yesterday:
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