A Few Millimetres

Two pieces of one coral in a tank at Pacific Grove, one brown, one gone white, touching by accident.

Where they met, the colour was coming over the line. Nobody had put it there. Somebody noticed.

So they did it on purpose: ten pairs cut from the one animal, five touching, five not.

The touching ones took the algae back inside eight weeks. After a week of it they could go on alone.

The others had only water between them, a few millimetres of it, and died at twenty weeks.

It would not cross to a stranger, not even one of its own kind. Only to itself, and only touching.