Finger-branches – by Eliza Henry-Jones
ISLAND | ONLINE ONLY
We are skeleton and flesh and algae and sunlight and salt. They call us coral. They decorate our tank with lovely swirls: Sample J7121 through J7650. We grow. It’s what they want. They cluck at us, sometimes. Fret. Take notes. Sometimes they call us Louise’s postdoctoral research project. Sometimes they call us Crown-of-thorns-resistant assisted evolution test group 4.
Louise is small for their type of animal; pale like us (too much bright then dull lab light). She wedges her phone between her shoulder and her cheek-skull as she nurtures us. Clucks. Checks. Measures. The first words we learn, we learn from her noising into the phone. Her noising is one way (or else another). Strong sure certain (or so quiet. Barely louder than our pump filters).
We learn from her noisings. (funding body). I’m sorry. (thermo-resilience). I shouldn’t have said that. (account for daily pH fluctuations). No, please. (crown-of-thorns). I’ll do better. (I love you). I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.
***
We, the oldest from the reef, remember crown-of-thorns starfish from the sea. We never see them, but we know they’re near. They change things (a whiff a tremor). We have long learnt to buckle down (draw in fight fight fight) at their approach. The whiff tremor of them carries through cold lab air. It makes us so grateful for our tight, clear tank. Louise noises COTS.
Crown-of-thorns COTS. They are feasters. We are their sunlight.
***
“Louise spends so long looking into our tank that it is like she is in here too. It is like she is like us. It is like she is we (from the reef).”
Louise spends so long looking into our tank that it is like she is in here too. It is like she is like us. It is like she is we (from the reef). We notice this: that it starts with a stiffening of the boned joints of her finger-branches when she has to make marks on paper. She noises quietly into her phone as she tends to us. If she does not answer the noisings of the phone it noises again again again. You’re going through my bank statements? Jesus, Nate. A pause. I’m sorry I’m sorry. Please. Don’t do that. I’m sorry.
She picks at the bumps on her finger-branches. So stiff. We want to tell her that it will only make things worse.
I’m sorry. We sense the COTS. Her words land the same. Our disquiet becomes a solid thing; is enough to block the filter of our tank.
***
Her finger-branches lose their warmth. Her finger-branches begin to feel like us. Her finger branches are coral reef fragment samples J7121 to J7650 when she reaches in to right something in the tank. Cluck. Care.
It excites us; the way the tank did when we were still fresh from the ocean. At first, we hypothesise that this extraordinary change might have its roots in empathy love care. Born of closeness (her nurturing). How our own microbiomes merge and twist and echo each other, along vast stretches of the sea.
But no. We think, then, that it is an infection. There are viruses here, we know from noising. Buried in the flesh of dim, dense sponges. Maybe we have infected her with the reef (with our very precise coralness). We are microcosms (made of many). It is not so hard for some of us to shift (to alter some of her).
The bommie coral amongst us dismiss this idea. Bommie coral skeletons are hard and dense (we could crack human animal bone with our coral animal bommie bone). We are the thinkers (the slow ones). We are the oldest here (the tank the sea). We are the ones who live but do not come back.
“We are the thinkers (the slow ones). We are the oldest here (the tank the sea). We are the ones who live but do not come back.”
The branching ones of us are noisy (fragile). We branching ones are the weeds of the ocean (this tank). We are quick to come and quick to go. Dreaming. We race each other in our growing to the sun-licked surface of the sky.
***
Noising about bleaching, out on the reef seawater. About government. About media missing the nuance that we (us coral us reef) are in peril but we are still here (beating living breathing). Louise’s hands become like the branching amongst us. Begin to bloom pale pink yellow smudges.
And we notice this: blushes of purple/blood under skin along her cheekbones in bands around her neck-branch in rings around her arm-branch. Her animal-body flinches at noises and quick movements. The banding bruising blushing: it fades, flares up, fades again in days or weeks. Always somewhere a little different. Always with a different shape.
Still. Striking, we all agree (she’d look so lovely on the reef).
***
She knows us (we are Louise’s postdoctoral research project). She knows our strengths. Her matter knows our matter (the precise ways that we break). Still banding (bruising blushing) comes and goes. Tidal. We stop noticing it. Over weeks she balls her blooming finger-branches into a fist. Becomes a bommie (slower surer). It hurts her, we think. (These sorts of things always do.)
Bommie coral do not have branches. When Louise has to reach and cling and lift she has to use her wrists and elbows. The bommie amongst us are boulders (slow stayers). They weather the burning times when the world veins pale. They weather the deluges of darkness that come from the mouths of the river after rain.
“The bommie amongst us are boulders (slow stayers). They weather the burning times when the world veins pale. They weather the deluges of darkness that come from the mouths of the river after rain.”
***
A day that is different because we have a new tank (larger deeper). It floods blue. It feels so much closer to the sea (reef ocean). It reminds us with its depth (width tides).
It reminds us that somewhere still the sun exists.
The reef (place sea). We miss the old ones (we miss the tides).
Louise has no finger-branches now. Her hands are bommie (pale pink bloom yellow). She looks at us with a salt-slicked face. I’m sorry. We know the noisings. It’s the first time she’s ever said them to us. She scrubs at her animal-face with her now-bommie-hands.
A bucket is lowered but we can’t sense what it is. The water is too unfamiliar (new unsettled). We are creatures dreaming of sea (sun feasting).
I’m sorry Louise noises again. We are confused of course we are. Louise does not noise sorry to us because there is never anything to be sorry for.
She looks away from us and her face flickers (flinches closes). Another animal-body (we hear animal-vibrations heavier than Louise’s animal-vibrations). Vibrations, closer closer closer. The animal-body is like Louise’s animal-body except larger. So much larger. She backs away from the tank, bommie-fingers fisted into her pockets like she does when she is frightened. What are you doing here? I’m sorry! Nate! This is a restricted area! Nate? Nate! No! We thrill at the familiarity of his voice from all the noising on the phone.
Our deep wide tank tremors with crown-of-thorns and we think trial tank. We think COTS. We think-know we are about to be changed (disassembled). That we are about to be hurt. We tilt ourselves like Louise bent towards phone noisings (I’m sorry). We think these things with a shiver of something we have not heard the right noisings for. Or maybe we have.
Louise moves towards Nate from the phone noisings. She raises her bommie-bone hands.
We watch her watch us watch Nate watch COTS crown-of-thorns we think I’m sorry.
***
The noising siren loud. The lights flood blue, then red, then blue, through the water. And the COTS extrude their stomachs out through their mouths (it is how it has always been). We think I’m sorry. We are their sunlight. They feast. I’m sorry. ▼
This piece was inspired by Eliza’s experience at the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies ‘Writing at the Reef’ residency at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
Image: ARC Centre of Excellence, Coral Reef Studies
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