I find it hard to say the things I think if no one asks to know them. I’m learning that this isn’t always fair. Someone has to be first.

My favorite deep sea creature is the Pink See-Through Fantasia. It’s a sea cucumber. Most sea cucumbers don’t leave the ocean floor but this one can swim. It paddles around using the collar around its mouth at 8,200 feet below sea level. It’s dark down there which may be why it wasn’t discovered until 2007. It is also bioluminescent which makes its intestines visible from the outside.

The Pink See-Through Fantasia protects others the same way it protects itself.
If attacked, its fragile skin lights up and stains the attacker with a glow-in-the-dark paint. making its own predator a target. It can’t be killed without leaving this mark, this warning from the beyond: here is the thing that killed me. That is the Pink See-Through Fantasia’s legacy. Noble and karmic. It’s a hero but I don’t think it knows it. It probably never asked to be one.

I often feel like I make it hard for people to meet me where I am because I’m swimming too far down. I often feel like everyone can see through me straight into my guts. And sometimes I light up even if I don’t feel like being bright. even if it feels like I might die! I also get very fixated over the stains I leave on others, what the cost is that they come at, who is paying it. So we have these things in common. Not much else.

We’re different because I want to glow in the dark, I want to stick, I want to be heroic. I ask myself to become these things and this is how I know for sure that I’m not noble.

I know you didn’t really ask to know about any of this But I think it’s appropriate to talk about sea cucumbers if they can say something about your mind and your heart, which they always can.

Knowing a person’s feelings about a sea cucumber is as important as knowing what they do when the ice cream shop is out of their favorite flavor which is as important as knowing what they think about their grandparents which is as important as knowing why they like to style their hair the way they do. It’s as important as knowing the most boring thing they do and the bravest thing and the loneliest thing. It might even be crucial.

I’d like to know how you feel about the Pink See-Through Fantasia and I’d like to know how you feel about other deep sea creatures. If you’d like to talk I’m asking you to. I would like to know.