Cartography of the Aquarium

The aquarium is a slow atlas of light, continents of glass breathing under sodium moons, schools drifting like weather across a blue that never ends. I press my palm to the cold and feel the day turn.

A diver in a black suit folds through the water, his bubble-rosary rising, unspooled prayer by prayer. Behind him, a ray writes its wide signature, a paper plane gliding over a letter no one will send.

Children pass, their voices smudged by the wall of water, and the fish do not look up, being busy with their own gravity. Time is viscous here, a clear syrup that holds floating leaves of kelp and my reflection, blurred.

When I leave, the city feels thinner, as if the ocean were an alternate street I might have taken, if my map were truer. The night is an empty tank, waiting for light.