Leatherback Turtle

I. The night was as thick as melted asphalt when her prehistoric form emerged like a monument in the sand and each egg that descended spiked the air with the scent of birth, sweet, pungent, and female. Drunk with labor, she could not sense the mass of people that surrounded her, the eggs that slid through her rubbery body, or perhaps the knowledge that, in minutes, she would abandon them forever. Who could know how far she had traveled or what force had pulled her home like snare in that death-black sea. II. Do they look for her when they have pushed their way through the grit and sand or fumble for the safety of her strong flipper when all she has left behind is instinct cold as the saltwater that must sting their newly formed eyes. Decades later, the few that survive will rotate the earth with their memories, the turbulent water pressing against them like sadness to return to the place where they were born. And when they reach it do they search for her before entering that trance, wanting to see that she, too, has come back and has been waiting all this time in the darkness.