The thing about jellyfish

The thing about jellyfish,

Is that they float and sway and drift through the current,

Drift the way they are pushed

 

no heart to ache

no bones to break

no blood to boil

no brain, no thoughts to make.

 

Its paradoxical, how I envy and pity them

To be able to hurt but never be hurt

No pain in body or brain

 

To sting and not be stung

To not allow the smallest shift in tone

To prick crack and break bones.

No emptiness when alone

Jellyfish have empty flesh that can’t feel bullet holes

 

But the thing about jellyfish,

Translucent in the water, barely there

Just a wisp in the cloudy air

Beauty that does not exist for themselves

But colours and lights  and shapes which dance for someone else.

 

I’m not like a jellyfish.

Though my eyes know beauty just as well as salt water,

I have a heart, though it’s glass too,

Even if it aches and breaks and falls and feels missing from my chest,

 

It comes back

Like the moon in the sky, it disappears, but slowly, surely, it comes back

Like the warm glow of the first rays of summer sunrise,

While the jellyfish are floating, drifting, sinking like ghosts far under your feet.