Pearlfish
364 words of something!
“Pearlfish”
Always sinking.
The drop begins in the center of her body, pulling the rest with it into the blue. Water, closing around from every side.
She futilely thrashes. Mouth open, crying out. The sea pours in. Salt scouring throat. Dark water presses behind eyes, into ears.
Then she is returned. Vast, empty abyss.
Again she swims toward a surface she cannot see. Her lungs cinch tight. Heart hammering against teeth.
Returned.
Shadows circle beneath her. Above her. At every angle, loose blots moving through the blue.
They close in. Sleek backs. White undersides. Eyes, devoid.
Drowning is indifferent. An animal has intent.
One turns and rises. Its mouth opens. Concentric, rotting rows of teeth.
She reaches toward them. The jaws close.
Slicing. Crunching. Splintering.
Refining.
Returned.
She lifts her hands before her face. Lace-like membranes of silver-blue web her fingers. Fine scales sheath her skin in milky cobalt, violet, and green. The inside of an oyster.
Above her, a glow burns through the glacial water, unwavering and absolute. She is no longer afraid.
She swims. This time, without resistance. The blue lightens. Surface broken.
Floating in a chamber of slick, violet-grey flesh, she sees no sky. Curved walls sweat around her. Everything glistens.
Suspended above is a craterless moon. Smooth and spherical. White-pink and green.
The shell opens. The seam parts. Hot white light pours through, bleaching the chamber to bone.
Iridescence, stripped from her body. Scales turn translucent. Veins appear briefly beneath her skin like silver, iced-over streams. Then even they dissolve.
Her body gleams. Marble held to the sun.
She grows in the light. Feet lengthening against the curve of the shell, legs unfolding, spine lifting vertebra by vertebra. She rises. Too large for the shell. Too large for her scales. Her own skin.
All dissolve into shine.
When the white clears, she shakes the too-small shell from her ankle and runs. Sprints.
Lush green unfurls in every direction, dew-bright.
Water, splashing. Wet blades stick to calves. Clover, crushed beneath her feet.
She feels everything. Each leaf. Each stem. The world touching her completely.
It does not hurt.
i am grateful that you would ever read this. thank you for spending any time here !
i would really love to hear what u think, what resonated with u, or what meaning you took from it. Knowing your insight is my favorite part of sharing work. It is what i look forward to most. <3
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I loved this! The vivid, visceral language was, as usual, perfect. It always feels like your poetry is something you read from the inside out, starting in the stomach of it and finding yourself appreciating it from an aerial view by the end. This one was especially fun to sit with, thinking through all the different meanings it could hold, depending on which way you look at it, depending on which direction you're coming at it from. But the theme that stood out to me was the process of renewal through destruction, becoming more through the matrix of constraint.
(As a bonus, I looked up pearlfish and discovered that they live inside the assholes of sea cucumbers, and that's a cool little fact I'll have to whip out at dinner parties now.)
To me this felt like letting parts of yourself go as you grow into a higher form of self, each stage you become something new you make it through the suffering and emerge a thing of light and beauty <3 I hope you always keep your love of writing Ramona