Dodo Eraser

At the aquarium, I wonder if the fish remember
the sea or if anywhere can be freedom
if you’ve never seen your enclosure’s walls.
Maybe some oceans are only as large as a
dew drop, sucked up in a jellyfish heartbeat
by a wandering bee’s proboscis. And maybe,
just maybe, some oceans have hard edges
and bucktooth children tapping at the glass.
The sky feels that way now and again.
Like a dome overhead, spreading from the horizon
up, up, up – far enough away that it shouldn’t
really matter, but it does. It always does.
As a child, I believed that if you listened hard
enough, you could hear its electric thrum.
The frequencies. And like a whale calf separated
from the pod, I’d cry and whine my protestations
into it, hoping they’d bounce off endlessly in some
feeble, misguided attempt to echolocate
the other roaming mobs of wild youth.
We take up such little space in the world. It’s magnificent.
Yet so much happens between June and December.
The sun sets, the moon rises. The handlers introduce
new species into the Pacific tidal pool tank. Chitons
and brittle stars, by-the-wind sailors. A single octopus
that they swear is there, but I can never find, no matter
how hard I squint my eyes into the nooks and crannies.
I wish I were an octopus. I need hearts to spare
at the rate this world is breaking them.
I can’t remember the sea, if ever one existed.

Ava Loomar is a 2025 Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and journalist based in Atlanta, Georgia. Her poems have appeared in Anthropocene Poetry Journal, Alien Buddha Press, JAKE, Eunoia Review and Sky Island Journal, among others. She is currently working on her first chapbook. Find her on Twitter @AvaSLoomar, Instagram @whosava, or contact her at avaloomar.wordpress.com.