Older Than Sea Shells

Returning to the water’s edge,

I press my scaled arms into the sand,

wings unfolding from behind my shoulders.

My limbs root into the earth,

body held by warm resistance.

I raise my reptilian nostrils

to the morning air—

  drawing in

   a breath older than sea shells,

   laden with ocean and flame,

    musk of wet stone,

     hush of salt wind,

      sunlit earth.

My faceted skull shifts—

a cartography of ancient lands,

a cosmos mapped in bone.

Geometries of meeting—

each tectonic plate

encountering the morning,

land masses

brushing against one another,

submerged forms

emerging.

As sunlight warms my skull,

the crescent moon

lingers to the right,

while the left hemisphere

rests in darkness—

waiting,

dreaming of a tropical night,

crickets stitching the quilt of darkness

with their song.

—Lorena Wolfman (2020, 2025)