BY Victoria Alejandro
The La Jolla kayak guide points to figures lined up on a rock.
“Terns,” she says, “haven’t evolved for millions of years.”
They don’t have eyelids and they dive for their food
under the surface of the ocean. They die when
they go blind.
When they’re blind, they can’t catch fish.
She says they usually die when they’re forty or so.
For millions of years, the winged dinosaurs we paid
eighty dollars to see from a kayak tour of
cove ecosystems, have hit the water so hard
fish after fish, that they die when they’re forty.
Who needs eyelids?
I lost my sunglasses in the water.
I close my eyes to face the sun.
Victoria Alejandro is a Puerto Rican poet, writer, and journalist based in Los Angeles. She loves lakes and strip malls. Her work focuses on the slippery lines between nature, the body, and time.