Koru Magazine

Dorsal Fin Deconstruction

Claire Xu, U. S.

It took you 8 million years to figure out that we can’t
both be beautiful, and that girlhood always finds its way
back to the sea.

Jade-eyed seaglass inches towards porcelain ecstasy,
and you kiss these fossilized joints with lukewarm lip
while I drown in a decanter of sugar-free cherries jubilee.

There is no mention of what it means to be swallowed
over and over as the salmon’s roe wished, or why your young
mother kept a defunct jukebox at the table and chewed death.

Do you think the beached boy was once a deer was a
rooster was a homo was a T-Rex who drowned
himself to kiss the lightly salted cheeks of pennies?

You place tangerines by what was once a pelvis,
stele made of chalk and sun-dried arteries, and at
37 ppt the ocean turns grief to prayer

These whale spines boil into peach saccharine,
and all this is to say that I never liked
baby blue on you.

Claire Xu is a 12th grade writer from Maryland. Her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and she is an alumnus of the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference, Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, and Iowa Young Writers Studio. When not writing, she enjoys visiting art installations and completing crossword puzzles.