Bioluminescence

Each wave that breaks against the hull scatters a blue the mind has no word for— phosphorescent, the guidebooks say, but the light is older than language.

Dinoflagellates, their billion-fold ignition triggered by the mere disturbance of a hand drawn through dark water, as if touch itself were flammable.

Beneath the surface, jellyfish pulse their cold green lanterns through corridors no one has mapped. They have been signaling since before eyes existed.

A swimmer told me once she stopped mid-stroke, afraid to move— the ocean had become a sky and she was falling upward into stars.

What we call darkness is only a room waiting for the right pressure to reveal what it has always held.