BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS

and horns like fishbones at the prow.

Tides misjudged would see them swept out to sea, pickled in salt, found many years hence, a confusion for naturalists. Truly primordial. Seasalt herbivores speeding their way over the sea to Skye.

Sophie Thomas

The Last Blue Whale

“Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, And You heard my voice.”

The last blue whale is swimming in the thin stud wall of your hotel room. On the phone to a loved one, you pick at the label on the wall that tells you the whale’s name, its taxonomic classification, its date of approximate birth – the last blue whale moves like Judy Garland in slow motion caught in the thin ridges of holographic plastic and its song echoes up towards you, between joists, booming emerging out of the wall somewhere behind a shelf in the corner on which someone has placed a stack of neatly folded towels and an aloe vera plant.

The last blue whale swims closer until its dark and lidded eye fills the space between the sofa and the door to the en-suite and (returning the phone to its receiver) you walk up to the wall, push the sofa to one side and stand inside the eye of the last blue whale – run the thin edge of your fingernail along the peak and valley, crest and trough of the blue-black

(bible-black) hydrocarbonated sea.

As you move your head from left to right, your eye catches first one side then the other of each holographic ridge, inviting the eyelid of the last blue whale to (open) – close – (open) –close – (open) you are locked into a staring contest with the last blue whale and, keeping your head perfectly still, you place your outstretched hand against the wall (the whale’s grey and solemn face fills the wall and the water is dark and cold). You curl your toes into the pile of the hotel room carpet, feel its synthetic fibres against the thin skin of your foot’s arch.

The voice of the last blue whale lifts and breaches like a crack in the celluloid of an old film and you are reminded suddenly of Celia Johnson’s face at the end of Brief Encounter. Those eyes. The leaves of the aloe vera shudder a little but the last blue whale is bored of you and your daydream about Celia Johnson and it blinks once, twice please, use my handkerchief pin-pricked light tying you in ribbons of wavy murk into which you (frail skin-boat) sink.