chrysaora fuscescens

Juliet Smith

so i was sitting there on the floor, bruises building where my knees pressed against the ground and my heels dug into the scant meat of my thighs and the rough carpet scraped against the palms of my hands and that’s when i met god– well, okay, i’ll slow it down. i’m getting ahead of myself here.

3000 miles away in a state suffocating in fire and apocalypse, an aquarium had set up a camera and was sharing a livestream of their jellyfish: pacific sea nettles, to be exact. translucent orange on deep blue, gold glowing tangled tendrils fanning out and wrapping me up and dragging me in and holding me tight. closest thing to a hug i’d had in weeks, really. the description calls their tentacles "mouth-arms," tactility turned to hunger. i don’t remember the last time i ate.

they floated by, bumping into each other without a care and i kept thinking how nice it must be, not to breathe, in these times where respiration means smoke and poison and disease. sea nettles exist solely in a state of consumption– they spread their poison-coated arms and feast, undulating lazily through the waves.

so i was swimming with the jellyfish, hovering in my room as weightless and aimless as a creature can be when it is deciding to fly, and all the while the rat i had noticed a week before in my ceiling was looking down sympathetically and the footsteps in the hallway were rushing past and my phone was buzzing with a text from my sister and kate bush was crooning, every time it rains you’re here in my head, like the sun coming out– and god was any one of those things except maybe also every one of them and at the same time i think god was me.

my pantheon was quiet and we floated together. there are no waves in aquariums but jellyfish don’t need those, so we expelled water from our gelatinous bells and bobbed in still waters. eventually the silence broke, but i was reluctant to hear what everyone had to say. unfortunately it’s hard to ignore a deity, much less multiple– seriously, you try it sometime and let me know how that goes.

the god that was a rat began to cry, the god that was footsteps became a knock at the door and asked me to dine, the god that was a text told me to call my mom, and the god that was kate bush turned into a spotify ad and told me to inhale.

the god that was me went outside and ate some rice and green beans and hot sauce, and i stayed on the ground despite the sweet call of dark birds against a stark white sky. it began to rain, and miraculously my lungs did not fill with water.