Syngnathid

Sam Downey

There is a stillness scraped out by windblown sand over centuries transforming these stark cliffs into driftwood, smooth as the sky, grey as memory.

Memory. In the folds of the hippocampus lies the seahorse form for which it is named: hippo as in horse, kampos as in sea monster. There is a liminality to the seahorse, floating between realms as we define them. Not that a seahorse knows or cares what a horse is or how we fall short of defining gender—it is humans who gawk and wonder if Poseidon offered paid paternity leave to his chariot-pullers.

In summer, there are tidepools here among the rocks where small fish and urchins and, yes, seahorses, swim. Now icy froth laps ankle bones and thin skin separates salt from iron. This beach is the shape and color of a lost eyelash. The seahorse is a symbol of marine conservation for its cuteness, or its boundary-breaking.

It sticks in the memory. It tells a story by existing.

That’s not true. Do you think a seahorse is cognizant of its transgressive position, poised between surf and turf? They exist, and we affix a story to them. We do not do this for everything. Only the freaks

And the famous. Those without some curiosity to attract story-making must do it themselves or be left wanting, drowned out by the crash of waves and the clatter of shifting pebbles.

A Split-Second Moment of Serenity Crystal Chan