In an old box, she found a shell.
It was delicate, sweet pink, with spines spiraling to a cream-colored point.
The shell felt weightless in her hand.
She held it to her ear with dreams of the ocean crashing through her head;
the smell of salted wood and ***** long dead,
proof that everything will die and live and die again
until all the world is made of sand.
She expected the sound to call her home, instead,
the shell held only a thin whine,
like the sound of the tank above a toilet refilling
after the bowl has been flushed.