Rising and Falling: Purple Urchin, Abalone

Increasing, marauding hoards of purple urchins cause kelp barrens, which leads to undernourished abalone, depleted populations of abalone and all the other creatures that belong in the kelp-ecosystems.

Very sad.

Looking Into Mortality

Because I can't help myself.

Poor Motley-girl feeling miserable: last day.
20 years old.

Grief's Waters

Undertow, rip current, whirlpool, maelstrom:
grief will pull you into deeply dangerous waters.

Catriona O'Reilly's "Thin"

THIN

It is chill and dark in my small room.

A wind blows through gaps in the roof,

piercing even the eiderdown. My skin

goose-pimples in front of the cloudy glass

though there was scalding tea for dinner

with an apple. I'm cold to the bone.

I don't sleep well either. My hip-bones

stick in the foam mattress, and the room's

so empty. My sister is having dinner

with a boy. Awake under the roof

I watch the stars bloom heavily through glass

and think, how shatterproof is my skin?

I doze till six, then drink semi-skim

milk for breakfast (the bare bones

of a meal) before nine o'clock class.

It's kind of hard to leave my room

for the walk to school. No roof

over me, and eight solid hours till dinner-

time. All days my dreams of dinner

are what really get under my skin,

not the boys. My tongue sticks to the roof

of my mouth again in class. I'm such a bone-

head! And my stomach's an empty room.

My face floats upwards in a glass

of Coke at lunchtime. One glass.

I make it last the whole day till dinner:

hot tea and an apple in my room.

My sister seems not to notice the skin

around my mouth or my ankle-bones.

If our parents knew they'd hit the roof

I suppose. My ribs rise like the roof

of a house that's fashioned from glass.

I might even ping delicately like bone-

china when flicked. No dinner

for six weeks has made this skin

more habitable, more like a room--

or a ceiling that shatters like glass

over those diners off gristle and bone.

This skin is a more distinguished room.

--Catriona O'Reilly

For too too many of the women I've known.