Shells, Shaded
By Ursula Troche
Wild and wonky wonder shells. Carnival of forms. This is the shapely and wild afterlife of whelk shells. Sharp or timely, like bones of antiquity. I admire them, their grace, their power to convey a story to me, as if speaking: “Here I am, I’ve come a long way through the sea, the waves, the flow, the stream, and I have carried life!”
I take them to the promenade, with its fence before the shoreline. The fence is marked by posts, and in its shade lie limpets, sitting pretty like the others, wondrously wild.
Then I take the shells home: the whelks, the limpets with their shadows. I paint some of them, leave others naked. In this way I can remember the sea, and find my inner shell opened.
Opened up now, painted or naked, half and half side by side, there is more and more to remember. I find waves. Measuring their lengths, I wonder which of them might be the same.
Me, my shells and I, my shades and my paint, coming off. More shells and pebbles bringing shadows into the room as the sun shines on them, gathered on my notebook, intergalactic.
Later on, fresh, strong daylight comes into the house, illuminating a group of shells on my little table, laying like long drawn out mirrors. I reach out again to my notebook, notice the sun, the shadows—the way the shells are lit has already changed. Movement is fast, change comes.
I had been following hidden, unknown footsteps. The past in pieces, beautifully laid out, I get an idea, an empty shell, with a shelf-life run out. It’s time to move deeper, migrate again, somewhere unfathomable. In between the places I have been. What was in this: shadow or mirror? Shell or self?
Ursula Troche, writer, artist and double migrant on the Irish Sea Coast on the west coast of England. Inspired by space, place and the in-between, inner lives and hidden stories. Shortlisted for the Northumberland Association Writers Award 2018. Most recently published with “Sky Morning” at the Sublunary Review, Cabinet of Heed, Morimaru and forthcoming at The Seaborne Journal. More details are on her blog: https://colourcirclesite.wordpress.com/