by Autumn Sharkey

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Listen, there’s a sea in this shell
she said. This woman – my memory.
Beach stones shiver in the tide.
Small me waiting to hear
we look out over Portrush feeling
the sea-rhythm of the known.

That sea is inside me now,
a beat of our past folded into a shell,
while I stand on dry land and wait to feel
your resonance. A memory
held by my North Atlantic arm, here
we wash sand from our feet in the tide

and swept forward, I am drifting on feeling
by a London pond which ripples.
I can follow this shore by muscle memory
but I navigate by sound, and now
we crest back to a Coleraine stucco shell
estate. Red, white and blue marks here.

With my fingers I grasp to hear,
cradle thought with hand’s feel,
handling a bird brittle shell
I hand this hermit-house to the tide.
Choosing how to say that I know
shapes sound around memory.

And there you sit in the hull of this memory,
Breathing coronation street and stale smoke. I hear
us pulling silly faces in the kitchen and I know
you fierce, then washed-out – but I feel
the life that washed through you too. Swept by tides,
I’m with you on the same shore seeking shells.

June, you laugh in my memory and feel
the salt on your lips before you hear the tide.
A moment I can know for you, I’ll hold it in a shell.

© Autumn Sharkey

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Autumn Sharkey is a writer of prose and poetry based in North London, UK. They facilitate writing groups for different communities, focusing particularly on marginalised voices and the power of writing in speaking up. They also run and host a monthly literary cabaret called Universal Erection, that celebrate playfulness in creativity and performance.

Find them on Instagram @autumn_sharkey.

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