The Psychrolutes Marcidus and the Carcharodon Carcharias

Written April 2021.

I’d like to be reincarnated as a fish. To have seaweed and seashells and sand tangled in my fins like bubblegum in hair. My uncle’s hometown in Hungary is littered with fishing boats. I’d caught some sort of baby shark back there with my feet half-submerged in murky water. He made me release it back into the tall reeds, I remember the distinct sound of it plopping into the lake from twenty feet up.

Someday, I’d like to go diving, see billions of sapphires fluttering about. Atlantic, Pacific, I don’t care. Yesterday, my mom told me that I should focus on school, not fish. My friend says they wish they had a passion like me, outside school. Schools of fish. Ichthyology, I think. They don’t teach that in Harvard. Boston’s waters leak sewagey sludge from every crack and crevice. I like the way the barnacles shine like tiny stars glued to sodden, wooden poles. Look, it’s a shooting star.

Tomorrow, the moon will be “super pink.” Maybe I’ll be able to reach into the sky and get a taste of a crater-filled gumball. Dubble Bubble, Hubba Bubba, Bubble Yum, Tootsie. My grandma used to call me her tootsie, but I haven’t seen her in a few years. She’s 80 years old and creeping along the line between the living and dead. Circle of life, like a certain lion once sung.

Old people kind of have gills when they smile, aged cheeks wrinkled with time. You can differentiate male pea puffers from females by three distinct traits: a darker body color, a black stripe along its belly, and prominent gills. When I stick a needle in a pufferfish and it bursts, I’ll take a bite of bubble gum and blow a pink circle ’til it pops.

Oceans go down how far? Blobfish live between 2000 and 3900 feet below sea level. Nothing would bother me down there if I restarted life as one. When a blobfish is brought above a certain depth, the pressure makes their insides explode like fireworks and their body ceases to support its organs. Talk about going out with a bang, literally. Ready, aim, fire!

Gold over clown, guppy over tang, minnow over parrot, cichlid over chromis. Saltwater seas daze you with gems of color poking about, corals filled to the brim with tiny specks of pink and blue. But those shimmery fish scare the life out of me. My roommate came face-to-face with a barracuda while scuba diving. I’m not interested in those overly sharp incisors and marble eyes, but I appreciate the offer.

Dolphins aren’t all that innocent, either. A group of them will kidnap a poisonous puffer and pass it around, getting high off its toxins like the poor fish is a glorified bong. Humans seem to adamantly believe they’re so different from other animals, and they’re right. What kind of dog would subject itself to sixteen-plus years of getting yelled at for running through halls? The rabbit lost the race in the end, anyways.

When I’m a fish, I’ll kickstart the intellectual evolution of fishkind. My offspring will have the intelligence of every human here and before me. We will rise above man and create a new Atlantis, where you are enslaved to us, indebted by years of excess fishing!

There are too many fish in the sea to worry about how people will see my aquatic addiction. Even if it turns me into a fish, who’s here to judge? Sure, I talk about it too much. Maybe it’s an obsession. Maybe I’ll forget this stored-up ichthyological information kept in my head in a year or two. Maybe I’m the blobfish and you’re my great white. I’d stare you straight between those jagged jaws and swim right in.