I’ve heard that a blue whale’s veins are so large that a human could swim, naiad-like, through them, diving into the thick currents nourished by a towering heart that thundered like bells. Such a caprice is not easy to forget, and if I could take that bloody journey, I would indeed. I would wear platelets for scales with DNA coiling in ringlets around my head, the drunk oxygen rising from the waves in a claret steam as I reached into the uncharted rivers and estuaries of foreign circulation, fitting my fingers into capillaries and arteries like scarlet gloves. I would wave gaily at Jonah, quaking in fear and hiding behind a curtain of baleen and jawbone. I would journey the cartography of the living plasma that floated on tides blindly, with no guiding moon embedded in the flesh like a pearl in an oyster’s body, only bone and muscle that flinched and contracted, channeling the wandering proteins and minerals to direct the beast from a daring breath of air to a sounding dive and protecting me in my ruby chamber from every pelagic mood and fancy.

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