Moon-Snail Shell

by Alisha Fernandez

---

Gray spirals
hold your voice
I press it to my ear
while the years
run backward.

My small fingers
sifting sand
in golden ratio,
your invisible
hand around mine.

A foamy ocean
mouth swallows
our skipped stones.

We dance across
driftwood ribs
and find the singing
tidepools,
dipping our ankles with
the sunbathing starfish.
​
We never made wishes into the waves.

I trace the gray edges of this shell,
the way your thumb must have curved
around me,
humming sunshine
before you left.

---

Alisha Fernandez is a poet and emerging novelist living in Furlong, Pennsylvania, with her husband and three daughters. She has been a writer and science communicator throughout her life and holds a PhD in energy engineering. Raised in western Washington, she writes toward the natural world, domestic life, and the inner landscapes they reveal.

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