"Whale-fall" by Jeff Whitney

And so you set outto know the worldbut once you reachedthe Pacific you turnedinto a carrion-eater and took to wing.Island, island, everythingan island you learnedafter a year circling the globe.Soon you got tired and so doveinto the water where you becamean angler fish down somewheredeep. You followed your foreheadfor years. Occasionally an entire whalewould sink past en route to the bottom.You enjoyed the cold and the darkbut you missed the air above the seaand you missed your human legs.A whale might sink for daysbefore it settles into silt.Maybe it never does. You don't know.You've seen almost everything and you don't knowif any of it ends, if whales themselvesdon't grow wings and straddle the globeor grow legs and walk the land,if in their new lives they returnto the bottom of the ocean as the sandbeneath their rotten shells, the same sandtwo children collect in buckets togetherto make a place on some beachtime can never swallow, much less find.