by Chloe Martinez

So there we were in Mexico and it was not like commercials

in which tanned families float in a still crystalline bay

communing with angelfish. It was not like the last part of Splash

where Darryl Hannah and Tom Hanks leap off a New York pier

into an East River suddenly lush with swaying kelp and coral,

his white work shirt (he has lost his tie by now) billowing—

no, we were in Mexico in the water and staring pelicans sat

on huge black rocks called Los Arcos, and the waves kept

flooding our snorkels, and the fish were not so much

colorful as large, and close, and they had teeth.

We flailed in fins and masks to where the tour guide

cupped his hands around a green sea urchin—

this was the part, I thought, where we could touch

those spines, see them shiver in response.

But he held it away beneath the surface.

It is frightened, he said: we must not make it afraid.