Broken Shells: pastel graphic portrait

Broken Shells

I search for postcard-perfect specimens,

oceans moaning in their depths.

Surf belches forth

broken pieces, survivor bits

of crash and thrash, puzzled guesses

at what they were

or what they might become.

I choose fragments for their shapes,

colors, the way they feel in my hand.

See how this one's edge is smoothed,

worn weary before it reached me?

A gray spiral like an eye.

A curl, a horn,

a ripple like a potato chip.

I start to arrange them mentally,

see how they might fit-

an abstract sculpture,

jagged mosaic of my own mind.

At first I fail to see it there,

the perfect shell,

the collector's dream,

as if its former occupant walked

straight out of the sea, a suicide

drowning in air, and left a relic

on the beach. I pick it up, turn it over carefully.

It's so complete.

I put it back.