How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

by Sabrina Imbler

I see something that no one expected to live not just alive but impossibly flourishing, and no longer alone. I see a creature whose present existence must have come as a surprise even to itself.

Imagine having the power to become resilient to all that is hostile to us. Confinement, solitude, our own toxic waste. Salt, waves, hundred-pound sturgeon that could swallow us whole.

External examination: There were no signs of any deception. You almost wanted something like that as an excuse, because such ends felt less painful than the idea that one person had simply lost interest. There were reports of preexisting conditions: incompatible interests, incompatible desires, an imminent graduation. The proximate cause of expiration is still unknown.

The immediate cause may have been one last fight, in which both individuals accused (one more than the other) and both individuals cried (one more than the other). At some point, you turned to begging, asking M if there was any way to make them stay. The fight, ironically enough, occurred on Hope Street.

On the internet, one species of yeti crab, Kiwa tyleri, became the subject of a popular meme. In it, a lone yeti crab perches on a craggy rock above the caption: “This creature has adapted to the crushing pressure and oppressive darkness.” When I first saw this meme, several days after Donald Trump was elected president, I felt a kinship with the crab. I made the meme my cover photo on Facebook, which felt much more biting at the time than it does now.

It feels wrong to ask something as soft and amorphous as a cuttlefish to hide inside the sharp angles of a square.