[Image Description: Black and white photo of a woman on the beach. Only her legs, arm, and stomach are visible. She is covered in sand. Photo is taken through the leaf of a plant.]
Poem by Avery London
fulgurite*
amber drips when heated,
yet
that caramel sagging around your neck
reflects
blue veins quaking in a body of earth
scorch me
douse me
nails intertwined, scruffs painstakingly close,
your
quartz fused with our voltaic purrs
as we
lazed alongside in the bed of a beach
shock me
ground me
teeth’s electric fever triggered a chain
reaction
when our granular panting struck
glassy
and I stopped in the shell of silica
shuck me
shroud me
wanting eyes glazed to a crust,
every
fibre animating our feral synapses,
our
chemicals decomposing in the discharge of flesh
touch me
house me
and
in the jagged beacon of a bolt
and
in the blend of roiling sandstone
and
in the beat of heartbeats
and
in the breath of fossils,
feed me
complete me
we crystallised ourselves
in the skin of each other
*vitreous material formed of sand or other sediment fused by lightning.
This poem is about erotic longing as a natural phenomenon, as primordial as lighting against the sand. However, while the thrill can be galvanising, there's a barrier between the body and the heart. The phenomenon can be whittled into physics and chemistry, yet no matter how hard you try, intimacy can't be explained through science.
Avery London is a 15-year-old junior at Sacramento Waldorf School in Fair Oaks, CA. They've lived most of their life in the foothills of Northern California. As an Okinawan Jew, cultural and religious identity informs their fiction and nonfiction work. They enjoy experimental and free-verse poetry, and always love a good flash fiction piece over tea!