‘Shell Bowl from Whistler’

Keerthana L is a Master’s student in Psychology who initially began creating art as a personal hobby. She is currently curating work in collaboration with Heart of Hopes.

A glass bowl sits upon the basement bathroom marble.

Blue with Scotch bonnets, banded tulips and conches.

Coffee beans. Ammonite. Cockles. Broad-Ribbed.

Mum said to hold a top shell to my ear. Teal and

brushed. Listen to the beloved ocean. She, from Tanga’s

shores, finding compromise with the Pacific Ocean. I

heard not the swimmers but the lions roaring across

time zones. I heard the cheetahs running. I heard elephants

calling her name.

Sabrina Shabana Vellani is an Indo-Canadian actress and poet from Vancouver, BC, Canada. Her photography and poetry can be found at @sabrinavellanipoetry on Instagram. Her work has appeared in The New York Quarterly, The Literary Review of Canada, Dark Winter Literary and more. She has just finished her debut poetry manuscript with the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. Her latest poem, Identity, was released recently in Blue Moon Publishers' Canada Is Our Poem Anthology as well as her three poems in Tidewater Press' Emerge 25 collection.