When I Think of the Immortal Jellyfish
by Christen Noel Kauffman
(published in Whale Road Review, 2016, Issue 16)
I think of the way your legs sprawl across my lap, your bellybutton a map of how once I
split myself in two. I remember the fibrous web of a peeled orange and how you asked me
to tell you the color of sound. How I feel the finality of moving spheres, the sun burning out
on the crevice of your neck. I won’t see the last time your ribcage expands into drum or
that the sky is a memory suspended in blue. Daughter, there are blue whales giving birth to
thick calves every year, colonies of ants building roads below our feet, their bodies plucking scraps from the skull of a dead raccoon. I twirl your hair into the rim of a cup just to drink
every molecule held tight below your chin. I know there are strands I will never get to
trace. How a star burns for three million years and then not, my body the shape of a
crescent moon who one day forgets how to breathe.
I love jellyfish, but the title of this poem made me go to it immediately. That conversational tone--as if I were sitting across from a friend at a restaurant and she said, "when I think of the immortal jellyfish . . . "--completely pulled me in. I wanted to know what it is that she thinks.
The first clause could be the start of a romantic love poem, but what comes after the comma lets us know--this is a mother speaking to her child. Later, we discover it is a daughter being addressed.
All of the beautiful (and painful) images bounce us between life and death. However, the reader should keep the title in mind throughout, as that is our guide to the point of this poem. Yes, parents die, but they remain alive in their children and the generations beyond.
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