Hundreds of miles inland, I hear the sea swirling beyond suburban homes, sharp-edged rectangular lawns, past crane-flies lugged in the stars’ quicksand and the moon’s fish-light. I listen to the ocean bend with eels and scallops big as heads stirring silt of the abyssal plain, polyp-rooted against translucent crabs, and sea turtles cape the blue depths, their arms winging.
I turn jellyfish-blind; my body becomes a squid smashed in a sperm-whale’s mouth, molten with moonbeams. Each second of my life drifts closer to the crater where all rivers merge, mountains crumble into beaches, beaches into seas, black lobster priests anointing holy tunas, praising darkness with their claws.
My destiny dissolves towards waters, my shark-shredded flesh ripped into something so immense it can’t be understood by the wisest humpback, the loneliest nautilus. I don’t drown in a coral reef, or shipwreck in a jagged shoal, but spill to the deepest space, dimmer than the shadow of buried coal, the weight of the whole earth and heavens rolling over me, and I am happy to have found a place where time is not real.
—Eric Fisher Stone loves animals and is fascinated by the mystery of nature. His favorite animal is a javelina, and he has recently become enamored with newts. He wants to provide his readers with a sense of wonder and a heroic vulnerability in the face of the vast universe.