abyssal zone

i.

they do not know us,
those spiny wet creatures in the deep.

they feed low
and they glow.

they are shards, slices
of gill or fin;
they dangle pretty baubles,
luminous lures drifting
on cold currents.

ii.

but consider the blobfish,
whom we humans
wrenched to the surface
from the deep sea:

so named for their ruined bodies,
which rapid decompression
made into gelatinous, fleshy tumors
with beady eyes
and frowning mouths.

now imagine
we humans were dragged
one by one
by some leviathan
to the very bottom.

why, we might be named
after our tendency to explode.

they would eat us,
cradling shreds of us
in their tentacles,
lapping our blood,
snapping our bones in massive beaks.

we do not know them.
they drift, searching.

the dark water carries them,
the water not background
but substance itself.

iii.

the ocean is an unusual prism:
as it deepens,
it subtracts light frequencies
instead of diffracting.

red,
the longest wavelength humans perceive,
is the first to go.
red cannot penetrate below shallows.
orange, yellow, then green follow,
vanishing in turn,
washed out by fathoms.

four hundred feet down,
only violet-blue endures
in electrically vibrant
neon water.

then, at eight hundred feet,
purest ink of blue.
were a human eye to behold it,
blue photons would soak
and percolate into the eye;
blue seeping, saturating,
blue making all forms itself.

then the abyss.

iv.

sunless waterscape,
a firmament of alien planets
gliding uncharted, timeless,
free of gravity.

here, bioluminescence
is language, currency —
a way to eat
and a way not to be eaten

or a call, or response
or simple expression of “i”

a wad of light expelled to distract;

an attractive, irresistible orb
beckoning toward scimitar teeth;

a blast of vivid blue cloud
(untranslatable)

swimming, swishing
meandering patternless
at the bottom of the prism

v.

black has many shades,
carries much.

if you dip your fingers
into deepest marine,
many mean things
will bump against them.

-

© 2023 nessa jasper