A Beach That Made Me Think of My Sister
Amanda Robins
The way my sister & I talk about
our trauma is like that Texas beach—that
hissing shoreline. I know you’re thinking what
I’m thinking, but it’s just like the waves &
the creepers beneath the sand & the sea
turtles we don’t see when they are swallowed
& the crystal shards trapped & mingled into
dirty pearls. Sometimes a whale dies where you
can see it—in all this oxygen. Some
times the water gets too deep. That’s right. I
know what it sounds like, but it does. It’s just
like sometimes when a jellyfish kisses
my thigh & knee & she tells me to pee
on it. The leg or the fish? I don’t know.
Amanda Rachel Robins works as a teacher in Missouri. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Slipstream, The Moth, Literary Mama, Gasconade Review, Crack the Spine, Atlas and Alice, and others. Her Twitter handle is @RRobins86.