Chloe Shannon Wong
Ten Million COVID Cases as Ocean Resuscitation
Golden Shovel after Mother Goose’s “Ring around the rosy”
You put diamonds on to go swimming tonight, and what I see is a different ring--
an old, soldered plastic one, a second, deliberate mouth, a mask looped around
all the roads and rivers that keep your body together. You are golden now, but the
breaths tucked between your wheezing teeth were once far less than rosy,
and I remember clutching your fingers between those citrus-stained coughs. My pocket
has held ten million sickbeds. Yours was white, water-logged, jammed full
with prayers and shark teeth. Doctors sunk you into the ocean and told me to think of
better things—the Sierra-glow that I grew up on, a fledgling quail’s birth song, the posy
flower you put inside my redwood bassinet. They said, this woman will soon be ashes--
but I answered, this woman’s name is California; starry seaside; she accepts no ashes
today. From that, your lungs heard surf and survival. Between echoes, we
watched the gray whales beach you back to shore, and between breaths, I milked all
the mussels that followed. Now see the ocean two years later, half-in half-out of its fall-
ing—salt still sits between your lips, but it cannot drown our grotto hearts down.
You put diamonds on to go swimming tonight, and what I see is a different ring--
an old, soldered plastic one, a second, deliberate mouth, a mask looped around
all the roads and rivers that keep your body together. You are golden now, but the
breaths tucked between your wheezing teeth were once far less than rosy,
and I remember clutching your fingers between those citrus-stained coughs. My pocket
has held ten million sickbeds. Yours was white, water-logged, jammed full
with prayers and shark teeth. Doctors sunk you into the ocean and told me to think of
better things—the Sierra-glow that I grew up on, a fledgling quail’s birth song, the posy
flower you put inside my redwood bassinet. They said, this woman will soon be ashes--
but I answered, this woman’s name is California; starry seaside; she accepts no ashes
today. From that, your lungs heard surf and survival. Between echoes, we
watched the gray whales beach you back to shore, and between breaths, I milked all
the mussels that followed. Now see the ocean two years later, half-in half-out of its fall-
ing—salt still sits between your lips, but it cannot drown our grotto hearts down.
Biography
Chloe Shannon Wong (she/her) is a rising high school junior from Arcadia, California. Her writing has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and the Los Angeles Times High School Insider. She is an alumna of the Iowa Young Writers Studio and the Kenyon Young Writers Workshop and is also a California Arts Scholar. She loves binging Netflix and spending time with Rusty and Lily (her pet cats).
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