You consulted your zodiac, and your sign had changed to eels.
You wrote a personality test, and the results came back eels.
You drew seven cards, and the cups and the stars and
the moons were all eels. The Devil and Death and the Wheel
of Fortune and the Hanged Man: eels.
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Cold eels, their absent shoulders quaking with treacherous laughter.
Frozen eels packed together in a single mass, waiting.
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Elongated eels shooting from the fingertips of a malevolent wizard,
electric eels like negative lightning bolts branching between
black earth and black sky, shade upon shade, dark serpentine
squiggles arcing through the black ink that always surrounds them.
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And you come here now because you want things to be better for you.
You want something done about the eels, but there is no one here,
no oracle, no answers. There is nothing here except the eels.
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What do you think would happen if you painted them all rose-pink
with daubs of sapphire and brilliant snow? What would happen—
what could possibly?—if you mounted all the eels with saddles
made of sofa cushions and Christmas lights? What would happen?
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Would you be a better person? Live a better life? Would you ride
unidentified and alien-bright across the disc of a two-year eclipse?
Oh, my friend, no one knows. No one knows except the eels.
“Eels”
Published online October 13, 2023