If Shells Could Talk

Would we listen to them?

If shells could talk would they ask to be left alone, as you walked barefoot in another foot’s path?

Would they beg to not be scooped up and plopped into a garden bed, where they will dry out next to the flowers you forget to water?

Would they bite back, if they had teeth? Scratch, if they had claws? Sting, if they had venom?

At certain beaches, the sign says it’s illegal to take. Yet, we take. (yet, I take). And place this pile of the sea on my desk, a tether to a world a bit softer than this. (which is only a dream,because the ocean is its own an angry planet ).

Before I pick the wildflower on a hike, mustard (it’s an invasive species, you know so it’s fine to pick, really) I ask it, “Can I pick you, please?” and I pretend it screams, “yes!”

But do I really hear it whispering, faintly? An echo of no?

Years ago, I walked by a neighbor's garden that’s lush and overflowing with flowers, and I picked just one. I asked the flower, of course, but not the one watering. And she catches me, tells me how wrong I am. And I offer to trade a flower from my tiny porch garden. I don’t think it’s wrong, the earth is for all of us! What an injustice, how entitled I am to all of earth’s miracles in nature. Months go by and I tell this story to a woman in Tulum doing my makeup for my sister’s wedding.

“She took the time to grow that garden, what makes you think it’s yours?” she questions me.

And I am now the colonizer disguised with all the jargon of the wellness industry and herbalists who perform respect. And I am wrong. And I really do love the flowers. And I am sorry.

Years later, I try not to steal from the earth, except for the abalone shell I found in the sand at my Grandma’s funeral. After a neighbor, an ex-olympic swimmer, gallantly swam past the break and let her biodegradable urn buoy itself to the ocean floor. When I prayed and asked her to please say something back so I knew she wasn’t really gone, and I looked down and saw a glittering shell winking at me. The same shells she used to go on diving trips for.

And when the fires hit the Palisades months later and we evacuate to Grandpa’s at Laguna Beach, and I take my friend's baby to the bench Grandma used to bring me overlooking the ocean, painted by red flowers and aloe vera plants; I find a giant abalone shell sitting in her place. And I take it home, feeling a piece of her on my nightstand.

The way I take is different now. The conversation has more meaning, and I hear more clearly. I try to take memories, not things from the earth. But when I do, all I can do is listen and accept the gifts when they come. And hope that I really hear this time.