by Eli Nixon
An unexpected benefit of giving up:
It’s after work on Tuesday. I sign off of my last zoom call, a robot among many, released back into three-dimensional life. Alone again, relieved to have more than an upper torso and pixelated face, I unfold my body.
I go outside and squint into the sun.
I eat a bag of gummy worms while I drive to the beach. I pull into the parking lot, swing open the car door, and take off my sneakers and socks. I run a finger between each toe. I sit back. Nobody else is here.
I’m still. I exhale. I let go.
I leave my shoes and keys in the car; the windows rolled down. I bring my mask. I walk through tall grass, straying from the path, for the first time ever, unconcerned about ticks. The field ends at a thick bank of phragmites, through which cuts a boggy graveled walkway. I pick slow steps around sharp rocks, match my stride to the soggy divots of earlier dog paws. The air is thick with marsh sounds. Phragmite walls end and the sky opens wide. Seagulls glide and dive. I smell low tide in my throat.
I take off my jeans, t-shirt, and underwear; leave them, and my mask, in a heap by the dunes. My feet take me to the water’s edge; I cross the foamy threshold. The sun sinks till I’m even with it. Behind me, the moon rising. I stand there till the lapping at my ankles stops being two things, lapping and ankles. I become lapping/ankles/sand///…
I lay down in the boodle at sunset. It’s freezing at first, I unclench into it. My blood cools. I stare at the moon with my eyes closed. I hear it. I match my breathing to the surf. The waves breathe me. I let the current move my limbs. Soon I have ten of them — much smaller, browner, covered in reddish whiskers, tipped with tiny pincers. I wave them about as I feel my back thin, harden, and curve around me. I rock inside it, remembering overturned turtles. As if pulled by the waves, or like playdough, extruded smoothly through a hole from small hand pressure upon a yellow plastic lever — like that, my tailbone pushes down, out, through — extending beyond where my legs had been. It browns, brittles, tapers into an amber point. I lift it! I flail slowly, twitch my legs, test my pincers, flap my telson till I learn where my muscles are now, again. I ruffle my book lungs. I keep breathing. I organize sudden movement to flip over onto my front; I use my telson for its purpose. I’m righted. In the next wave, lifted by the water. Pulled out from the edge. All my legs know this dance. I lumberfloat along the ocean floor. I crawlswim. Away. I eat a tube worm. Deeper. Into another 450 million years…
Eli Nixon builds portals and gives guided tours to places that don’t yet exist. They are a settler-descended transqueer clown, cardboard constructionist, and maker of plays, puppets, parades & low-tech public spectaculah. Eli collaborates with artists, activists, schools, mental health and recovery centers, libraries and the more-than-human world to expand imaginative capacity and build muscles for collective liberation.