"same sea" by Michelle Young

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Window with grey curtains on either side. Desk in foreground, papers and laptop scattered. In the distance, mountains and crashing beach waves. A seagull and seashell sit on the ledge of the window.

illustration by moe chowdhury

same sea 

agua means water 

it rolls off your tongue 

like a salty wave 

crashing into your lips

i dive deeper— 

in the sea

there are no borders 

tides kiss shores 

the moon’s glow 

blurs horizons 

distance between bodies 

mean bones left 

at the bottom / of the ocean 

i bring seashells 

to new homes 

cramming them into every possible crevice 

scattered across rooms 

they wonder / if they’ll / ever / go / back 

this world pretends 

dolphins need visas 

seagulls need plane tickets 

and crabs can be contained by walls 

but we are all ocean deep 

we are all swimming 

we are all drowning 

in the same sea 

Michelle Young (she/her) is a Venezuelan-Canadian writer humbly located on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples, also known as Vancouver, BC. She is currently the copy editor at The Peak and is an occasional freelancer at LatinaMedia.Co. Her poetry has previously appeared in amberflora. She is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and a minor in Creative Writing at Simon Fraser University. You can find her at michelleyoung.ca