WE WERE NEVER meant to thrive here. We were never meant to grow towards the light, though the light always finds us somehow. It warms the patterns on our shells, the thin grooves and waves, the tumours, the places where we have chipped one another as the tide combs through us. When the light touches us, we talk to one another in our slippery language, our wet, mucous fluttering. When the light is gone, we are mute; we are left to our own dreamings. 

We were never meant to thrive here, but we grow. We roll pearls in our mouths. Slivers of detritus slip through the seams of our lips and we take each morsel, swirling it like an arousing thought, massaging and lacquering, savouring. Our mouths are all tongue, all labouring gland. We are hungry.