by R. Sima Harris

Don’t start at the end. Start with the way light seeps down in little arrows and spills across rocks, sea anemone with their easy swagger. You’ve always kept one eye on the ground, littered with rocks and fish and one to the dazzling blue ceiling. But then, and it’s only natural, your downcast eye begins to creep up to the top of your head. This is, eventually, as it should be. You can now study the break between home and the heavens more absolutely, spread your great flat body out across the water. Some things are taking place above you, things beyond what you can see. A Chinese fisherman is laughing and in the sun his black hair looks liquid. There is a net. Your body is crowded against the mottled gray skin of a fish and lifted up out of the water. Feel the inane twisting of the other bodies, desperate for water. Your eyes flat against a brown paper, your pink belly up. Flounder.