How easy it is to harden our shell when our soft parts get poked.
The sea demonstrates this without spectacle,
a flinch translated into calcium and time,
a reflex shaped by tides that never explain themselves.

We learn it young, from reefs that cut the careless foot,
from sudden cold where warmth once lingered,
how quickly the body contracts its listening,
how swiftly openness learns the language of defense.

So we seal the inner lagoons where light once played,
close the coves where anemones breathed freely,
and call it wisdom when it is only memory
teaching fear to masquerade as strength.

But watch the ocean more closely — it does not stay clenched.
It breaks itself open on purpose, again and again,
offers its chest to the violence of shorelines
and remains immense, unthreatened in its giving.

Storms are not arguments the sea tries to win.
They pass through its vast nervous system,
leaving rearranged currents, altered colors,
but never convincing it to disappear.

Beneath the surface, the softest creatures glow —
jellyfish carrying lanterns of transparency,
corals blooming precisely because they are exposed
to the ache and nourishment of salt.

When we allow the shell to thin, just slightly,
the hinge remembers its original design,
and pain loosens into movement,
becoming a tide instead of a wound.

We then discover what the ocean has always known:
that tenderness is not the opposite of survival,
that to remain open is not to be unprotected,
but to trust the depth that holds you whole.