My Official Prediction For 2017

In 2017, the sea will finally take me. I will not go to it but it will be find me anyway: I will be doing something terribly mundane and unrelated, brushing my teeth for instance, with the toothbrush I have been using much too long, but whose bristles were so hard when I bought it that it will only just now after all these months seem well and truly mine, its head no longer rubbing canker sores into my lip and gums. I will only have just reached the moment where the bristles are soft enough when it is time to throw the brush away, or else it would be, except that day will be the day the sea takes me.

I will feel the cold first at the soles of my feet and then at my ankles. I will be surprised that the sea is there, in my apartment, bubbling up under the floor. It will rise and rise, salt stinging the clumsy-shaving-cut on my ankles. And then at some point I will lose my balance, or there will be a riptide, or both.

And then — well, then, the sea will truly have me.

I will be carried off in it, then. The powerful waves will shuck off my clothes and the seaweed will twine itself around my hair. Sand shall logde permanently under my nails and stay there and gather and in the mornings when I hold my hands up to the diffuse aquamarine light I will see that the sand has hardened to little pearls. And sometimes I will think that if I could trade these pearls in for money, I could buy a toothbrush that actually fits my mouth and won’t scrape my gums even on the first day I use it.

And then I will remember that sea-people do not use toothbrushes, or care about dental-work at all. That, at least, will be a tremendous relief.

My toenails will also be pearl-under-the-nail. As for the toes themselves, they shall be webbed, along with the fingers. The webbing between them now, the semi-translucent pink tissue, will grow and spread naturally. This is more for me to fit in with the other fish than it is to help me swim — fish are tremendously snobby (I always knew it!)

I don’t need to swim or do anything. The sea, my captor, my world, will provide all. I will drift about, slow and cool and impressive, the baleen spread over my lips catching all manner of tiny delicious things, krill and plankton, shrimp cocktail and clams casino.

Whether the sea has taken anyone else, or just me, I don’t know. In 2017 my consciousness will brine, pickle, I will be dizzy from the bends so long I have forgotten what I look like. I will know nothing, remember nothing, except the fish I float by will be seem just as blissed-out and soothed as I plan to be.

I wonder when I am carried out, whether I will be on my back or on my stomach? Will the water fold its hands over my eyes and pull me to the bottom for the journey, or will I be allowed to drift beneath the glassy surface, and watch the buildingtops flicker shadows against the sun, until there is only flat horizon as far as I will ever see?

Also, I’m really excited for Star Wars Episode 8.