Moon jellyfish under a blacklight, Waikiki Aquarium. We talked less about trees and more about nothing, playing endless games to name the elements or species of fish until one of us would hit something or start crying or simply not respond. After a while I stopped having visual dreams, shifting in my sheets as my mind recounted sounds and sensations that were all cold or steel or underwater. I’d imagine tables that weren’t there and reach for railings that had never existed. We had no concept of time and soon the darkness made it hard to remember what was real. He didn’t leave at B shift but there wasn’t much we could do about allocations anymore. Lev stood up and walked out to his berth. For the first time in a long time I thought about my sister and the house I lived in as a child. The way it looked like outer space from the periscope windows.

I pictured the tiny dots floating out like stars. “It was nice,” Lev finally said from the wall.

I knew everyone was zooming out, imagining once again what we looked like from far away. The Captain walked over to the air vent so it blew on his face and hair. We listened to his taps for a while until we fell back into ourselves. He was Korean and couldn’t really speak English but he was the best technician at Woods Hole lab. “I just wanted to make sure.” There was silence and I could hear Hyun clicking the switchboard down the passage. I waited for the Captain to reply but he didn’t. “They’re not coming back.” It was Lev’s voice and I heard him lean against the wall. Wanted to make sure we didn’t miss them if they came back.” I was always accidentally listening in because I couldn’t think of anything to say. Poshol na khui, suka!” He kicked the metal and I inhaled. “Then how do you explain the goddamn fluorescence? You know damn well cnidarians can’t survive in near freezing!” He was pacing now. Maybe the pressure streams are different in the trench.” “We’d know if we were rising.” The Captain must have been sitting down. I heard Lev talking to the Captain by the desalination tank, which was easy to find because of its dull hum. It was a small ship, only an Alvin II, so I could pass whomever I wanted to if I took the right turns. I heard this on a cave tour in Arizona but Ellen was the only other crew member who listened. It’s easier when you pretend to be blindfolded. I sat there for a while but they never came so I pulled out the ripped piece of shirt to tie back around my eyes. I waited by the periscope for the rest of C shift because it was my sleep break anyway and I wanted to see if the currents changed and the jellyfish came back. There wasn’t a point, I told them once while we were eating dehydrateds, there’s really no point. I preferred the days when no one spoke, or at least not about the surface. Lev would pace around and scream things in Russian or slam his fist against a door, but he was young and louder than the rest of us. The power was on but the lights couldn’t be fixed from inside. We were thirty-six thousand feet under when the ballast tanks broke and the pressure gauge short-circuited the electrics. Not even our fingers flexing in front of our faces or the steel walls we ran our hands along as we passed through chambers. Eventually, I heard the Captain stand up – but it was a while before he finally cleared his throat and felt his way back to the controls. The five of us sat on the steel for what must have been an hour before the fluorescent specks drifted out and the submarine returned to its blackness. My eyes hurt from seeing but there was a strange hope in the blue light, and the weeks of darkness drew us toward it like moths. No one said anything, not even the Captain, and I could hear Ellen breathing hard against the glass. The glow was dim but we could see our arms and outlines and after a minute we stepped away from the glass to look at each other’s eyes. They floated down on the ship like snow and even Lev came into the sail to press his face on the periscope. When the jellyfish came, we woke everyone up.

Challenger deep