impulse behavior

the wake of the boat aligns with the extended arm of the milky way. you stare out at the sepia ink black water and wonder how people could have seen this world and its surrounding stars without the electric powered night lights, caution lights, and street lights of modern convention. but it's the south pacific, so you see a lot more than you would back home, or anywhere, probably, in the continental US. if the pattern appeared on a fish, you'd feel a need to reach out and scratch it, fearing it was a rash of some sort… a disease that looks too similar to your own psoriasis. but they are stars, not welts, and because they are shining with such intensity you breathe in the relatively non-polluted air and relax yourself. you saw a shooting star yesterday. it was beautiful. but it frustrated you that you couldn't think of what you wanted to wish for in the half second after it faded away from you. happiness. not even, you wished for contentedness in the fifth second of the realization that you'd seen something rare enough to be special but common enough for you to know what to do. don't be too frustrated. you were drunk after all, and it was your birthday. already you feel like you're making good on your promise: content that you suck at thinking of immediate wishes. you breathe in. it's not cold. it's not hot. it's perfect.

you could jump. it scares you, but you've been in this water several times today and you think: i could jump. the boat is going who knows how fast and you could just stand by the side and then flip yourself over. you stop breathing at the thought. they always tell you there's nothing poisonous in the water. the sharks, too, even though there are a lot of them, they have never killed anyone. so what would happen if you did jump? you'd see nothing, except the lights of the buildings on the islands that are half a mile away from you. and maybe, if the angle was just right, you'd see the moon, one-eyed and batting an eyelash at your misfortune. or maybe you'd toss a bit and see it smiling a smile that was too full to make you feel at all comfortable. and you wouldn't be. below you the water in the day time is the darkest of blues. hundreds of feet deep. and in the water, at night, you'd have no idea what could lurk underneath you, watching you thrash slowly, an adrenaline addicted junkie. you wouldn't breathe. it frightens you to swim in Lake Michigan at night, and the worst things there are lampreys, sophisticated hagfish. they can latch onto you, but they'd be unable to extract much flesh. so imagine swimming at night in a deep, deep ocean. you'd cry and you'd scream and it would choke you on the salt water. you'd drown. no question. you could try to swim to safety, you're a good swimmer, and you can swim half a mile, but panicking as you do, you'd lose your heels and then your bare feet would be exposed, just as they are when you're sleeping on a bed too small for you, and here, just like in your bedroom, the monsters are no less terrifying when you're almost positive they're entirely made-up. you'd end up, dead of course, near the very bottom of the ocean. what would devour you there? so many types of sharks that scavenge only. you'd be picked apart by tripod fish and other rarities. cookie cutter sharks would nibble into you, perfect circles cutting into your once near perfect flesh. and maybe, as a treat, Chthulu would pick you up, visiting as he was in this region, just as you were. your small body would be wrapped into a tentacle, and you would slowly decompose as the author of all things bobbed you up and down in the tremendous depths like some live action barbie doll.

it's an imp, an impulse, and it takes your breathe away even to think of it, landing in salty south pacific water and eaten alive or having to swim to avoid such an outcome. so you stop breathing and you sit, quietly, your thoughts unable to process the thousand different ways tonight could end and the trillions--you can't think of any set of numbers higher than that power--of interactions you could have within a two mile radius of your very position right now.