Nursery

I found a shark tooth in the back garden,
planted it in a bowl of dirt and waited. Two days
later there was a tiny gray sprout; two weeks
and it flowered, a thumbnail-sized
bud the color of clouds threatening rain.
I made a cutting just before it opened
and set the stem in a vase on the kitchen table.
Everyone said they'd never seen a flower
such a shade that wasn't already dead.

Clearing dishes after dinner one night,
I saw something swimming around the stem.
I stopped up the bathtub and poured out the vase.
The swimmer leapt from the water to bite
the flower as it fell. It ate every petal.
I closed the curtain around it
and went to bed.

In the morning, I awoke to a wet slap,
ran to the bathroom, forced open the door.
On the floor, the blonde-skinned, tiny-eyed sea dog
thrashed in a puddle, gills gasping, nose pointed
towards the ocean. As if it could smell
where it had not been born. As if home lives on
even when we are made in the wrong place.









Emily O'Neill tells loud stories in her inside voice because she wants you to come closer. Her work has previously appeared on the flyleaves of library books, in dim bar light from Portland to Orlando, and folded into the jacket pockets of strangers. She has a degree in the synesthesia of storytelling from Hampshire College, where she built a novel in a lake town of hungry ghosts and penned the chapbook Quiet is a Brand of Noise.