1 minute read
Cool, Fresh Ink
The rock walls are slippery, oil tends to collect towards three hundred feet. I’m losing my grip and adjust it without thinking. The creature turns. I freeze, detached from the wall. Black eyes look at me, into me, and the current starts to pull me out of the cave. A split-second decision. I pull out my light and set it to high. The creature explodes in a burst of shining scales, and dives. I need to move quickly. I push out of the cave and start to ascend. I have enough air to make it to the next pocket, but I can’t swim this quickly upwards. Oil chokes my vision as I hit the wall, climbing in a panic. My joints are starting to burn. That’s not good. Decompression sickness kills. I skim the wall until I slow down. The creature is nowhere to be seen, but the clouds of oil obscure my vision. I have no way of knowing if it’s turned around until it’s on me. I start my climb again, slowly.
The world rests in motion. An endless circle of life and death, as effortless as living, and dying. I escaped that day, from something that came from a world unknown. I will continue to escape, until I can't. This is the way the world works. We live to live and then we die. I want to see the world. Somewhere, I believe the stories are true. Golden fields, icy skies. Somewhere, the world runs clean. Away from the cities. Away from polluting creatures. Somewhere, that plastic-filled monster roams free, in the open ocean. Somewhere, I believe, I am happy. And so is the earth.
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Cool, Fresh Ink
by Noah Wing
Vanity runs from the wells of most pens Clenching our necks as if a fox does spring To rile a coop of corn ridden hens Whose plumpened breasts prevent their outstretched wings From shooting through the dug up, frayed wire mesh. A predator of prey, this pen will seek To gorge upon this crimson feathered flesh. Yet is there an ink within wells unique? For in this world of fox and mangled prey Winds by the road—a creek of cool, fresh ink Where thirsty trav’lers drink while on their way
For can the Sodom wretches take our lives,
While ink feeds souls, tired of running from lies?
