How a Geyser Becomes a Fish

I am a well—

built eons ago,

cemented in stone

to quench thirst,

quell tears,

staunch the flow—

life’s elixir.

My fortified walls

barely hold.

Moss-covered stones

weaken with time.

Friction sands away

the brittle mortar

that once held

this universe together.

Subterranean waters

in aquifers below

rise through fissures

searching for the river

they lost long ago.

The tables turn—

what was once contained

now wanders,

carrying microscopic pieces of me

to lands I’ve never seen.

My world weeps

saltwater oceans

through storms and fire,

contracting in heat,

expanding in cold—

the frozen breath

of untold miseries.

The absence cracks

my carefully constructed walls,

built to hold

familiar versions of me—

a clear, spring-fed source,

not the sulfurous fire

coiled in the depths,

waiting

for pressure to breach the skin,

for the geyser to blow.

And when it does,

steam rips skyward—

blumes of red-hot anger

from aquifers below.

Carbon escapes

its shallow prison

beneath ice,

released

by the warmth of the sun.

Now I flow

into saltwater seas,

freed into

the birthplace of life—

a thunderclap,

a seldom-seen

phenomenon.

Echoes shudder

through ocean floors,

a language

long misheard.

Down here,

only the maladapted survive.

In this inverted world

of perpetual shadow,

rules collapse.

Up is down.

Oxygen thrives

without light.

A little black fish,

confused about direction,

catches a glimmer above.

It must be hope.

So she swims—

up and up and up.

She arrives in a world

desperate for a hero,

someone to fight the darkness—

a sacrificial fish,

so strange

She can’t help

but be adored.