In 2024, near a remote archipelago,

Japanese divers found the body of a colossal squid.

It was adrift in the middle of decomposition,

this half-forgotten  god of the trench. I read the news, saw the

grainy footage of limbs curling, bloated, suspended

    in between water and air. The things down there, in the deep,               

       are the planet’s first exhale – swollen, vestigial                  

effigies,      formed in the immense pressure of the deep blue.

The small squid in     the sunlight zone are only the   reborn ghosts   

        of the colossal squid, a relic of the ancient sea.

Can I be a        

                              reincarnation

of this             god of the trench,

formed in the womb?

Japanese divers found the body

of a colossal squid       in a year

     not far from     when my first exhale   

 was born. My    rebirth    in the sunlight,   

     not far from the body,     was formed in

the water of the womb.            Do small squid

      remember how it felt before the

                            evolution, wrapped in cartilage,

  soft-nerved, twitching in a translation

of some lost primordial message?

    How much can any                   evolution

          change and get away with it, before

        the rebirth      turns into something else,

                               before it’s some kind of a murder?

          For as long as I can recall,

                    I have feared

          being left drifting through the black of the sea,

not floating nor sinking.     Only       becoming

in salt.

         In 2004, near a remote archipelago,       Japanese divers

found                                           2004,      a year not far

      from the time     the body         was born.    Near a remote

archipelago,             a colossal squid.        In 2004

          my      reincarnation        found

                                                            the body.