Welcome back to our guest writer, Ghost! Their second submission is a short story that answers the prompt: "How has the way you understand your gender changed over time? How has it affected your access?" The text uses imagery of sea creatures that morph their bodies to protect themselves in new environments to discuss the ways queer folx change themselves as they pursue safety in an unsafe world and seek a version of themselves that fits their identity.
Ghost is a genderqueer and poly writer who loves to explore metaphors and use poetic language. They are new to submitting work but excited to do so! During the work day, she is an Electrical Engineer. They graduated from Olin College in December 2022. Ghost uses all pronouns.
Many thanks to Ghost for sharing their work with us! Scroll down to read their short story, "Queer Sea of Change."
Image Description: Pale blue jellyfish with white spots and golden ruffles float through a dark blue sea.
Credit: Kat_ G / Unsplash via Webador
Queer Sea of Change
by Ghost
I live in the coral. It’s safe - in a way. I’m surrounded by those like me. Yet, I’m lonely. The loneliness gnaws at me even as I swim in the school that I am told I should exist in. It eats me like a worm hiding in the sand that could jump out at any moment, like a shark sliding into the small holes in my image.
In my school, I look to the others to see what direction they swim in and try to match it, but I’m always one movement behind. I worry that this might expose me to predators and enemies outside the school, that they will see that I’m not part of the cohesive. Yet, it is not the outside that wants to tear and rend me apart. It is those closest members of my school that shift their body weight just so, so they may bump me further from the group, in hopes that something might pick me off and devour me.
When I realize this is happening, I define myself to be their opposite. To be like them, yet entirely different. You will let me swim with you, even if you are hiding your razor teeth the whole time or laughing freely with the others. But you will let me swim with you because I will not give you another option. I let myself become bigger and sharper, thicker skinned, as a warning to steer anyone away. I get the effect I aimed for, others who are like me yet are put off and might view me as an easy target, see that I am a threat not to be messed with. They swim a little farther, steer away from me.
This image affects everyone, even those who I have become accustomed to. To be feared, means to have no school, no group to shelter in. In their eyes, I am the predator, the enemy, the shark. If I continue on this route, I know there will be no turning back. I will have to morph into what I had feared.
So, I shrink. I let my flesh wash away until I’m a bit more palatable. Instead of being ready to strike, I feign obliviousness. I paint myself with orange and white stripes, to become a clownfish, to become the joke of the school. In return, I can exist in the anemone once again. No longer stung. I lay on its soft surface and let its walls do the rest. Whatever the others want to do to me, at me, in this space, is their prerogative. My body remembers its time as a pseudo shark, even if I will it not too. When others nudge me one too many times, I snap, taking in the smell of blood.
Smallness isn’t for me. Largeness wasn’t either. So where should I belong? I go from coral to crevice to anemone to sandy floor and swim for a while by each of its inhabitants. I meld my flesh, shift my colors. A creature of disguise, of adaptability, an octopus. I pull shells to me to hide my fragile flesh. I dart out, in a spray of ink, showing I'm not worth it. I change patterns and colors in an instant, to become a rock, to become the background, or to become someone else - to put the others at ease. They let me in, even if they notice I’m a little misshapen, a little too uncomfortable.
Image Description: A pale shark swims across the foreground with one beady eye staring out of the photo. Behind it, the images of other sharks swimming in the background are blurred.
Credit: David Clode / Unsplash via Webador
Back in the corals, I am bright and colorful and small. I talk animatedly, pretending that’s synonymous with freely. There’s a familiarity here, schools I used to call my own. Familiar dynamics. I keep thinking someone’s laughing, that they can see I have tentacles, and I am on edge. In reality, I know almost no one cares. Too wrapped up in their own moments. No more room for others into their limited space. In the night, they have to press back into the deepest parts of their shelter, for they know that larger creatures will come. I have to rest on the outside, as I don’t dare to reveal what I am by trying to wiggle further in. They might see my true shape. The sharks press their faces in, wiggling and biting, until one of them has its jaws around me. I panic, and I have to make a choice. I bring my tentacles out and stick them into their gills.
Saying to them “it’s you or me. Am I worth it? Do you think you understand me enough to defeat me?” I live on, but the others won’t give me any vulnerability anymore. They ask me why I would follow them around, like a strange dog, or some sort of creep.
So I move on. I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. Camouflage has failed me, yet when I peel it back, I’m not sure who I’m going to find. I drift slowly, down down down. There’s no one out there I can exist with, no one I can be, nowhere that’s meant for me. My depression muffles everything, the boundaries between coral and sand and rocks don’t exist here. It’s all blue, then all black, as far as I can see. And then in the darkness, a flash. A spectrum of colors, but only for a moment. They pass me by quickly as I fall further. I will myself to swim, to fight for something and for myself. I find an equilibrium. As I approach the bright flashes I saw, some of them seem familiar. I draw comfort. Some of them have seen and felt what I have, have left themselves be swept away. When I expose my soft underbelly, I see teeth, and realize. Some of them have hardened in the pressure, decided it was them or me. They take what they can tear from me as I leave. Never have I let myself become so exposed, and never have I gotten so
wounded.
I try to reshape into the large sharp predator I was before, but I can’t do it. I’ve lost too much of myself to be them again. I don’t have the fight for it anymore. Survival kicks in. If I fall further, there’s no coming back, so I swim. I become part of the current. Jellyfish and sea turtles and so many creatures I only saw in passing. Those who exist in constant transition, at the edges of it all, yet still moving, always moving. In this movement, there is life and vibrancy. Everyone looks different, and so my otherness is not so other. We are a collection of others, each looking completely differently. Solid in our change and our lack of definition.
Add comment
Comments