By Aanya, age 14
I sway,
white and bleached as bone,
a skeleton, really –
hollow as bird bones,
hollow as those who did this.
I bleed colour into warming seas,
a fever traced in NOAA charts.
Melt, burn, dissolve
in heat that never breaks.
A graveyard.
I trap organisms in my hollow frame,
zooxanthellae gone –
expelled like breath in toxic air.
Aragonite falls below threshold –
No longer will I build.
The ocean leeches colour back,
pH falling,
a souring womb of salt.
Algae exiled,
life draining
under UV drenched skies.
Not wildfire,
but a quieter burn.
The sea:
a hallowed cathedral of song,
now echoing with mechanical howls.
Whales call into static,
trapped in my vacant hollows.
Turtles crawl
towards the wrong moon –
blood in their wake.
Forests forget to wake
because cities never sleep.
Man-made halos drown the stars.
And still, humans stand—
forgetting the colour green,
leaving behind only
bleached coral.