February 2021

Silent glissandos of bubbles swishing around marine creatures, silhouettes beguiling the cool ocean lair of fluorescent colors that blinds with sweeping currents. I swallow the chewing gum, hard brass pennies scoring an indentation in a cupped finger. Now, in these corridors of glass, hidden worlds behind them, lunar notes trickle down liquid scales. They are faraway galaxies . . . Other music, pulse of movement, plays behind that sheet of glass. The aquarium is a living organism, fluxing and developing its body, dissolving as fish and sharks gaze at the iridescent-bright corals. In mounting dances of being, we take photos. A gentle babble, chatter amongst us. I say that the shark with its fin is leering at me. They leer and laugh at me in turn. The reflection of the glass mirrors and magnifies their separate joys. What, what must they think while the world outside drowns in rain, tinkling musically on tin roofs? Our dog came up to us, bedraggled after a long night of chasing cats, the shimmering frenzy of quarks and atoms on his straw-laden hair. And this afternoon, fog engulfs our town with its dark childless reign. We escaped to this aquarium for less water but find plenty more in the flow of aquamarine. Earth’s sap is unknown to them, prehistoric creatures alive since the dawn of time, now reduced to specks in water, gushed by man. We have lost our dreaming and our naïve believing that we could control nature—not harmony, a peaceful coexistence and thriving on this vast land— but loggers and poachers and thieves that reduce the majesty of these paperbark trees and tall blue mountains, spires reaching up, up to the clouds, and animals all thriving in seas, knowing the barrier between life and survival, now trapped with their pleading eyes and hollow, voiceless cry, grasping at a sort of eternity. Their hearts will forever be lifeless, never undergoing metamorphosis. Cameras flash, SNAP! SNAP! Visceral yet ethereal, those lights dance around the aquarium, a portal to their dimension, a celestial, bewitching world of ocean’s priestly rule. Back home, that aura of magic, that solid elemental vitality, still pulses through me. Gripping my pen, I write: Silent glissandos of bubbles swirling around marine creatures . . . Amber Zhao, 10Brisbane, Australia

From miles away we saw it, the mountain giant’s mouth. So we mounted our metal lions on wheels and sprinted toward the mountain giant’s mouth down its long black tongue. We jumped off our metal lions and cautiously tiptoed into the mouth. Its teeth drip, drip, dripped saliva down on our heads. When we reached the esophagus, the mouth closed, and we were engulfed in darkness, with only our cracker-like lightsabers to guide us. Ethan Chen, 10San Diego, CA