These are only the scratches we know. And you see how death’s groove spirals toward the uncountable. There are tons of bodies, masses of corpses, heaps of creatures we have known who now exist only dead.

Is your mind slipped over with a numbness that grows until you cannot feel your limbs? It is too much to count. We sing, we know.

We have tried and tried adapting, swimming ceaselessly through these ever more leaded waters. We have seen you too trying and tiring. But we cannot do much more. So from the soaking edges we sing. We sing to you who are also struggling.

We have fins that are old legs. You have legs that are former fins. And we see that you with your legs have charity runs to look for cures to cancers and sadness and madness. And when you run for charities, you drink water out of little disposable bottles of plastic, and the water in those bottles is full of plastics and metals that give you cancer. This is not kind, just true.

We in the sea have a habit of smelling and tasting one another’s shit to check if we are healthy and we can sing we’re not healthy.

We have cancers, cancers and sadness and madness that cling. We have memories stored in our fats alongside poisons. We have stresses and cancers from the plastics and oils inside. We have fish feelings, or let’s just call them feelings.

Fish have feelings.

We sing to you to say, “Hey, stranger to yourself, remember, this language is no shell game.”

Beneath these word-shells are soft bodies.

You are singing animals and this is communal music that makes it possible to see and share; we see the sick seas rising and dying and we are together terrified. We see sides parched and oversaturated. Warming and endless circling of poisons is happening.

Lead and mercury from oil are in our water, which is your water, or what it is, just water that exists. Water exists within and without you.

We sing all we know.

We sing the wet crisis.

From the soaking edge of the world we sing, we see the sea, and see you are animals who see the sea. We sing to say please. We turn on the record and weep our plastic-flecked salt tears.

We sing because the system will not just naturally change, so we must sing to change it. Sing to see the sea in yourself. Form bands to survive. If you see something, sing something, and if you sing something, sing like you mean it. We must change our lives to live. We sing all this to help you see, imperfectly, but as best we can.

Because if ever there were a time for this, this is it.

Sing with us with your whole seeing being, “This is it.”

31.

“It’s Monday morning. You have to go home, baby.”