It's 4 am and a shark is gliding across my bedroom. I am surrounded by an ocean of uncertain depths. What was once my bed is now a boat that bobs uncertainly. Either the water is rising or my boat is sinking, but either way I am almost out of time. The shark gets closer and closer, her fin cutting the water like a knife.

Wouldn't it be better to dive in? allow myself to be devoured? Instead I will myself to be still and try, as ever, to think my way out of trouble. When possums play dead, their muscles become stiff and their breathing slows. Their eyes remain open and they secrete a foul-smelling musk to repel predators. If only I knew how. Instead my limbs begin to twitch and I heave. My skin grows itchy and then cold as scales overtake me. My hands turn to fins and my eyes migrate to opposite sides of my head. I flop and flop as I suffocate. And then I find water somehow and swim. I remember the happiest moment of my life, when I carried three hundred million eggs in my pouch as I flew through the dappled sunlight of a purple reef. Of course the shark finds me. Of course she eats me, but I do not hold it against her as she annihilates me. Instead I try to remember what it was like: the warmth of the sun, the shade of the reef and the feeling of having so much potential inside of me.


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