Selfless Portrait

What will it be like when jellyfish are amphibious?

I fled. I drove to the last exit on the highway, near the ocean. I took myself out of communication with everybody. I changed my sleeping habits. I did 26-hour cycles. I was waking up at midnight before long and going to sleep in the afternoon. I took walks in the middle of the night. I looked for the stars’ reflections in the tidal lagoons by the ocean. I didn’t care for stars, but I wanted to fix them in place. I received texts from people on the other end of the highway, and I didn’t reply. I had once been part of them. I had once thought like them. I had used the silly phrases that they batted back and forth. I would not be doing that again. I would stay by those lagoons until I died if it meant clarity of thought. I would walk into the ocean if it asked. I said those exact words to the ocean, and then, as the sun lit up the east, I saw it.

It emerged slowly. It was a translucent blue. It extended six feet in length, with a dozen tentacles. It moved dispassionately, even as it resembled a broken-legged man dragging himself to safety. It walked up the beach, the sand clinging to it, masking its color, and made for the trees. It found one with crenulated leaves and began to climb, stopping where the first boughs split off. It cleaned the sand off its body in slow, careful sweeps. It did not disclose whether it was older than the tree. It did not disclose whether it was part of a colony. It had a mind, but whether that mind belonged solely to it or extended into a cerulean network of other jellyfish was not material. It did not mind the other blooms that had been spotted on subway tracks. It did not mind the gummed up propellers that had been reported at the airport. It did not mind. It perched on the tree. It gazed down.

We stared at each other for the whole day. We moved together, images in a mirror. We did not need the ocean. We did not need the highway. We climbed higher up the tree, which rustled but did not snap. We felt the sun rising higher, drying us off, passing through our skin. We were alone, alone at last. We had not been afforded such tranquility before. We had always lived in the shadows of others.

They took up the majority of the planet’s land mass. They colonized the ocean from the surface to the.depths. They seeped into every crack in the pavement, every niche. They dominated the markets. They cared only for conformity. They prioritized the very next decision without concern for the future. They had no intelligence. They had only muscle, only action. They were destroying everything around them.

They. They. They.

We. We. We.

It. It. It.

I.