The following piece is published as part of our TLM Young Writers series, a dedicated section of The London Magazine‘s website which showcases the work of exceptional young talent aged between 13-21, from the UK and beyond.
Creagh Factor
Taking in the Tides
I left
my plastic
cup behind today
cupped
my palms under
the fountain caught
its phantom silver for a second
drank up
the miracle
of our shared soul
like the
school trip
to the seaside
where I became a selkie
escaped
in the caress
of cloaks of algae
that were my second skin
and when I left
my toes endured as
tiny imprints in the shore
before the tides reclaimed them
and maybe
I had been standing
on the bank of an hourglass
as the sands of time poured away
trying to
lose myself
inside the beauty
of the drowning sea
clutching
at the waves
to catch them
in my empty throat
to gorge myself on poison
choking
on the pain
of our ocean
and the gorgeous
futility of trying to save it
_
Creagh Factor is a 16 year old student at St Pauls’ Girls School in Hammersmith, London.
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