Water

The familiar element.
It is most of the world. Agreeable,
it accepts gravity's instruction as a child
accepts God and monsters. Disagreeable,
it will swallow a child as quickly as a house
or a discarded bottle and will fill it
similarly, clutching to its soft
shoulder, caressing it away to nothing
but a house for a fist. It is a wonder, the way

we feel in water—in a pool, we'd claim
to control it, and there are lifeguards
and people float, remembering the womb
on some level, or further back,
through the special memory, to the sea
from which we crawled
first experiencing the unfamiliar hard
of land, and settling for it
on account of the sun, but preferring still
those all—engulfing pulses of wet. Water is
how we are happy sometimes, or sad,
depending on the tears, and it is how we are
sometimes tired, or feverish, depending
on the sweat. It is blue-green, although
it looks colorless, and it prisms well
and drinks well. It washes
the blood from our linens
and hands. One might throw it
from its complacency in
a drinking glass, into a dynamic
hand for which to slap the face
of an enemy. Or one might
throw it on a bird, suddenly
burst into flames, if one were ever to stumble across
such a horror. The thing

about water is that if we didn't have it
we would scrape around like corn
husks and likely crumble. Imagine if love
were dry. But no.
It is here, creeping methodically up the beach.

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Liz Lozada, age 18
2008 Finalist
Novato, California
San Domenico School (San Anselmo)
Teacher: Hilary Staples