“Man, it’s an alien world down there,” my dad says,
pulling off his mask, stroking
the cross that hangs down his neck.
“Tiny little suckers, those bottom feeders.
Can’t get too close to ‘em,
they just scurry away.”
Waist-deep in warm water, my dad’s voice
trailing through the cove, I take a deep breath
of heavy air before my legs go limp,
and I go deaf.
Swallowed in one gulp, the rising bubbles
tickle my chest. I open my eyes—
black marble eyes of an eel bore into me,
jaws unhinged. My skin recoils;
My teeth clamp down on the snorkel.
The dark tunnel of the mouth shivers
me, but I fear drowning more. Staring
into the abyss, I plead:
I need directions.
Miles upon miles of black rubber ooze
from the crevice into the sea;
And I follow.
The eel takes me downtown
through silty boulevards, schools of silver
needlefish, and cul-de-sacs much like my own.
Sea stars hug the cauliflower coral,
tanning their zucchini-purple backs
under the bellies of a hundred rays;
A reef octopus flirts with an army
of green anemones, linking arms in a
delicate dance till tide over.
And in the eye of my streamline comrade,
a white speck—Polaris, backdropped by
ocean night—a color, a language
I’d never felt, yet understood at once.
I remove my mouth piece;
My head never felt lighter.
Meanwhile,
somewhere off in a remote world,
my family sits underneath the almond tree,
humming their hymns,
not realizing I was baptized
the moment I disappeared.