ad nauseum

Beatriz Brodsky, United States

The sea and the sky and the beach are one stone

warm in your mom's hand, on land. Doesn't your skin

have to have been hardened against the bone

before your lungs can be stubborn, frozen,

and stolen? Where does it come from, the spin,

the nausea, the empty air, laughing gasps

or the sands your feet were still feet from, whims

swept away before you could step, whiplash

from where you never went? How long has passed?

Why do the fingers you can't move feel warm?

How many triplets of waves have been crashed?

Why is that guy still beckoning you forward?

If it's all in your head, why is your head so heavy?

Why couldn't this Saturday have started more gently?

Beatriz is a junior in high school in New York City whose work has been published by the Heartland Society of Women Writers and the Alcott Youth Magazine. When not writing, she can often be found knitting or baking cookies.