CORAL GRIEF

by Tommy M. Artajo

It started with color.
Neon riots under the sea.
Not chaos—choreography.
A rave of reefs—pinks, purples, oranges
so bold they made rainbows look shy.

I saw it once—
on a grainy NatGeo VHS
in my cousin’s house.
She said,
“That’s what Heaven probably looks like underwater.”
We were ten.
We believed in things like magic
and reefs that would never disappear.

Fast forward:
the ocean got hotter.
But we didn’t.
We cooled.
Bored of miracles we didn’t make,
we microwaved the sea with our emissions,
gave the reefs a slow fever.
And when corals are stressed—
they don’t scream.
They don’t fight back.
They bleach.
White.
Like a ghost
trying to remember it had a body.

And that body—
that coral body—
held worlds.
Little fish cities.
Octopus dreams.
Sea turtles that knew their way
by scent and starlight.
All of them—evicted.
Color—evacuated.
Just white skeletons now,
waiting for a pulse that isn’t coming.

You wanna talk about grief?
Talk to the ocean.
She doesn’t cry like you do.
She just
stops glowing.

Meanwhile, we argue over cruise ships
and beachfront property,
sip blue cocktails
on stolen sand,
pretend we didn’t build hotels
on what used to breathe.

This isn’t just coral loss.
This is cultural erasure.
This is spiritual amnesia.
This is God turning down the contrast
on an ecosystem
we decided was expendable.

So what now?
What’s the eulogy for color?
For things that loved quietly
but died loud
in silence?

Maybe the next child
won’t know what coral was.
Maybe she’ll ask,
“Mom, why is the ocean gray?”
And we’ll have to lie.
Or worse—
tell the truth.

That we drowned paradise
without even getting wet.

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