Ms. Jepsen always called them jellies and stars.  

Trailing tentacles and mouths on their bellies.  

She said they weren’t fish.  

She used words I didn’t know.  

Scyphozoans, echinoderms.  

 

Our class was never a nice one.  

Even in the fourth grade, I was acutely aware.  

Of how they bullied her when she didn’t look.  

Of how her jellies and stars were merely,  

Silly fragments of the sea.  

 

To them, the jellies were candy and stars in the sky.  

I found comfort in their words.  

Why look deep into the ocean,  

When the things proclaimed not fish,  

Were gasping for air, right above water?  

 

Fifth grade started,  

We saw her in the hallways.  

Her gray-brown hair in a high bun,  

Lightly disheveled like a jellies bell.  

I knew now what the big words meant,  

I meant to tell her.  

 

Sixth grade rolled in,  

Like a high tide that left jellies  

stranded on Alameda shores.  

A bulletin spiked through my heart,  

As I saw the piercing words  

Scrawled neatly by a printer.  

 

Remembrance ceremony  

In honor of,  

Ms. Jepsen  

Of Jellies and Stars.