I played with slugs, 

believing their shell-

less bodies raw,

requiring coveting.

As a child,

my neighbors and I 

ripped terracotta

bricks from our garden’s 

parameters and 

plucked the bugs’

thickness from 

dirt hiding places,

forcing them to commune

in concrete holes. 

I found 

my first snail 

in Costa Rica, 

clinging to some 

sturdy, damp tree

planted in 

a hillside

near our huts.

My family and I 

awoke one morning,

bamboo stalks 

crashing into 

our temporal home.

We rose to the 

forest wishing us 

away, asking us to go

back to America.

You do not know 

what it is 

to be warm and wet,

heaving with rot 

and rooted around 

for the likes 

of timeshares.

The forest felt

us dig our heels 

into its back, 

running for sport,
sightseeing 

while it staved off

smog. We moved deeper.

My parents 

returned one afternoon

and told 

my brother and I

about a fellow traveler

who’d lit his cigarette

while the leader macheted 

their fresh pathway. 

He’d dragged and 

dispelled his

unfinished stick

upon the

newly downtrodden leaves.

That night, 

our family stood 

on the beach

during low tide, 

watching the tortugas 

emerge from sea foam, 

paddle their way further inland,

bury white sphere offspring in sand, 

and abandon us and them. 

I writhed 

there as the sea’s insatiable 

movement roared white noise.

Holly Ratcliff is obsessed with her Australian Shepherd puppy and homemade cranberry apple pie (origin: back of Ocean Spray packaging). To have seen The Lion King II is to love her. And, no, you didn’t ask – but, Jason Marsden (voice of Kovu) did acknowledge her on Twitter that one time.