Taking Jones to Ripley’s Aquarium
The stingray drifts over us, it’s underbelly the face of a ghost.
It’s movement a kind of flight. Jones watches this impossible thing, it’s long, thin tail passing above like an airplane. The jellyfish are pink clouds that pulse mysteriously, belonging more to outer or inner space than this world we imagine we inhabit. Jones’ face against the aquarium window, his little finger prints visible as he watches a shark move indifferently past. The face is impassive, the blank eyes heartless and never in doubt. It moves through the water a kind of God.
The next tank is the wall of anemone. An astonishment of beauty. After a moment the man standing next to me says, “Imagine waking up to that every day?” His words are soft, though, almost whispered. As if emerging unbidden from his body and then slipping through his lips and into the world, and I can tell he is not looking for conversation. And so we stand there quietly. The puzzling light above refracting through the water, and falling to us as if through stained glass.
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