Seashell

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She is a seashell. Hard, beautiful, something to decorate the house,
perhaps the bathroom, make that room a theme, something that doesn’t exist,
but we will all pretend it does.
She is a seashell, smooth on the inside, hollowed out, nothing
there, expect the beauty of stark white, like a beautiful plate
without any nourishment.

She is a seashell with perfect imperfections, the ones no one seems to notice.
They run their fingers
over her, feeling each ridge under their prints, and
some use a fingernail to scratch down, hear and feel the sound
they make together: it’s not unpleasant,
but a sound you’d ask to be repeated in the name of knowing
what exactly it is, build a simile to name it.

She is seashell left on the beach.
A seashell someone would pause over, maybe
enough to crouch down on their haunches and look at.
Not beautiful enough to pick-up and wash off and
take home, but one that will hold a short memory,
shorter than a poem, one you won’t remember
in the car while you drive home, but will
remember the sand between your toes,
the rushing water, a few nameless left behind.