in which the fish is granted a wish

The sea was attempting to heave itself up the beach by the elbows, having no luck, falling flat down. Over and over.

That is a frightful smell, I remarked,
you have outdone yourself.

The shore is draped in an endless mass of washed up bluebottles which fill the air with a shrieking stench.

In a gesture of resignation, the next wave crawled up and grappled with the shore before losing its grip. Vast tracts of bluebottles, rafts of bodies opaque, sacs sky blue from the rain on the dark sand. The scent not sky blue at all, but a red rimmed cloud of brown.

“You can have your wings, fish” hissed the ocean.

I stopped.


“You can have your wings. Just show me how you swim today, fish, if you want so much to cross my horizon, show me today how you fly .”


So I launched myself into the sea, it seemed a layer of ice was on the top, and I glanced around for blue bubbles in the foam, but kept my resolve. They won’t touch me, I thought. Not today, or ever. I will always manage to slip between.

Rain flew down in mauve columns and sizzled the surface, but I swam on in the wildness, past the point where there was ever any doubt that I would do this, and would always do this, over the stingrays abed with their golden cat eyes, between the vile electric tails of inky blue dangling in the sea, under the roaring torrents which curled over in fists to thump the sandy bed.


The sea concedes: For a minute there is hush, and I notice she wears her shark-nets again. Dangling and empty as yet.


Go, then, she says.

And the fish prepares to fly over the far, far horizon,
over the dark dark sea.