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"Oh?" she answers, distracted<br />
by the anemone still cautious<br />
and closed at her feet. I nod,<br />
feeling even now its shape, its<br />
weight over-big in my hand, and that strange<br />
leathery surface after it had dried<br />
where I'd left it on the back steps<br />
of our beach house.<br />
My mother motions toward her shoes,<br />
and I watch with her as the purple-armed anemone<br />
begins to reopen, still timid<br />
in her shadow. "You just never know."<br />
I nod again, feeling more definite<br />
about this statement than anything else--<br />
and think back to my childhood anxiety years ago,<br />
how I visited those back steps<br />
every hour to examine the starfish,<br />
to make sure that it hadn't moved, that it was still<br />
dead. Because I had to know, I had to be certain<br />
not to take anything living<br />
from the sea.<br />
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