Sea Sponges | Teen Ink

Sea Sponges

April 5, 2014
By McHammerhead SILVER, Lake Charles, Louisiana
McHammerhead SILVER, Lake Charles, Louisiana
7 articles 0 photos 3 comments

Favorite Quote:
&ldquo;People who claim that they&#039;re evil are usually no worse than the rest of us... It&#039;s people who claim that they&#039;re good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.&rdquo; <br /> ― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West


Sea sponges are in the simplest animal phylum
That phylum is Porifera.
Sea sponges have no complex tissues or organs,
And they have no real symmetry.
Sea sponges are considered,
By some scientists,
Not to be animals at all,
But instead colonies of cells,
All working together in harmony.
If you put a live sea sponge in a blender,
And turned it on,
After leaving it there overnight,
In the morning you’d wake up to find
The surviving cells were re-forming into a sea sponge.
That is how I love you.
We have no real symmetry
The jagged, hard edged pieces of ourselves,
When combined they do not make
Anything worthy of a picture-perfect Zooey Deschanel rom-com.
But if you could hear my heartbeat, it would say;
"I love you. I love you. I love you."
Somehow we have found a way through each other’s walls.
Somehow your edges fit with mine,
Creating a masterpiece.
One that could not dance its way out of Picasso’s fingertips,
But instead set up camp with us.
Perhaps what I feel for you is not one love,
But instead colonies of them.
My cells are in love with your cells,
In a way that may be out of my control.
I can only hope that
If someone put us into a blender,
And turned it on,
Before they even turned to go,
We would have reformed
Into just what we were before.
Because although we are not perfect,
You make me laugh.
You make me feel safe.
You do not make me feel unwanted or inadequate,
You are everything that I am not,
And yet you know me so well sometimes it’s shocking.
So my love, do not make like the British and separate our colonies.
Do not force apart our edges, for that will surely break my heart.
Do not slice open this masterpiece.
Do not put us in the blender.
With college quickly approaching, the thumping of my pulse transforms.
"Please don't leave me. Please don't leave me. Please don't leave me!"
But you did. You did leave me.
You tossed me into the blender.
You tore out edges apart.
You built the Berlin Wall between us.
You stole the Mona Lisa and burned her.
You fought the revolutionary war wearing a uniform I'd never seen you in before.
My heartbeat slows.
"He left me. He left me. He left me."
I used to love you that way.
I loved you easy.
I loved you simple.
I loved you like a sea sponge.


The author's comments:
I can see my life travelling down two paths. One in which I teach high school English and act in my spare time, and one in which I become a biologist and travel the world. Bth paths are equally appealing, but I cannot choose. I attempted to balance my love of English and my love of biology by re-writing an old love poem that I'd written for the first man I ever loved.

Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 0 comments.