Nur’aishah Shafiq, Becoming Jonah

Becoming Jonah Nur’aishah Shafiq

Your first thought is that it is cold. Not: they really were right and you really can swim through the arteries of a blue whale—they’re that big. Not: fuck, this is a terrible crazy idea and you’re going to die you mad fool. You think neither of these things. But that you are cold, your fingertips already crystal, feeling almost cheated as you skinny dip towards the heart. You expected warmth, coral-stained waters gilded with moonlight and shadowed by palm fronds. It is summer after all and you seek release from your skin. But the whale is all silver rapids caked with ice; you, no more graceful than a child sloshing through a tube slide. It is lonely here, the lovely creature shuddering from your touch as it dies from the wound you left behind. You didn’t mean to hurt, you never mean to hurt, but here you are again, loathe to abandon the water park, abandoned all the same.