Whales

4 May 2021

We had just watched the sunset from the oil rig, the paint had long ago bleached off, the company’s logos faded beyond recognition.

The whales circled beneath us, hungry, sometimes ramming into the corroding supports of the rig, trying to shake us loose like apples from a tree. Most of them had scars from encounters with our campmates. We split a flask of euphorics and watched the sun gently sink into the ocean, like I’ve watched you surrender into your latex mattress so many times before, dropping, then sinking with a wondrous slowness over minutes as the elastic tension builds to support you.

We took the zip-line back to the shore, letting ourselves laugh and make faces at the orcas below as we glide over them. We even kissed, you braking on the wire so i’d run into you, both of us suspended there, taller than the sun.

A short drive back to town once our feet hit the ground. In the car, we improvise a new aria as if to explain ourselves. Our only instrument a deep and pitching hum which, of course, was destined to be drowned out by enginesong.