"Haven" by Nikolas Basmajian

Image by Jonny Belvedere from Pixabay

Everywhere I looked,

Towering stone walls loomed

overhead, reaching up towards the clouds above.

A deathly silence settled upon our shells, none of us daring to move a single claw.

We were being so good today.

The others shriveled up into their shells as well,

pincers gripping the inside of their armor,

staring solemnly at the rocks that trapp- protected - us here.

Don’t you worry, she told us, You’ll be safe with me.

And we were. We always were.

Here, we were safe

from all the cruelties that we were told were beyond these walls.

Suddenly,

I saw one of us get up and run towards the wall; towards the unsafe.

His little legs scurried across the dunes,

and he grabbed onto a jagged edge on the rock.

As he pulled himself over the wall, I allowed a small part of me to wonder,

but the rest of me knew what was going to happen.

A sudden thud. A splash of sand.

Added back to the collection.

Don’t be foolish, she scolded, you won’t be safe out there.

Who knows what might happen to us,

if we left the safety of her loving sanctuary.

I gave you life, she said,

her voice washing over us like a sandstorm.

I won’t let you throw it away so recklessly.

I embraced the safety; the sun-baked sand

inching slowly up my shell, keeping me warm.

I was safe.

I was…

sinking.

The walls began closing in, blocking out the sunlight.

The sand grew hotter,

each coarse grain eating away as it climbed up my shell.

You should be grateful, she demanded.

And I was.

I was grateful, for all the love she gave

so much I could drown in it.

The scorching dunes consumed my eyes,

my body began to melt, congealed, and hardened

into particles of golden sand, rising back to the surface.

Finally, I was something that would be forever safe.

Something that only a mother could love.

Nikolas Basmajian is 17 years old and attends the Singapore American School. Nikolas, who lived in Shanghai, China for fourteen years before moving to Singapore, admits that he has been passionate about creative writing since middle school.

Once when Nikolas was at the beach, he saw his friends collecting hermit crabs and putting them in a ring of rocks for fun. He tried to imagine what the experience was like from the crab's perspective, and the story eventually developed into a metaphor about a toxic parental relationship.