the shared patio

One was named Trevor, and he was having a birthday party this Saturday. Please come! the invitation said. We'll have a whale of a time! and there was a picture of a real whale. I looked into its tiny wise eye and wondered where that eye was now. Was it alive and swimming, or had it died long ago, or was it dying now, right this second? When a whale dies, it falls down through the ocean slowly, over the course of a day. All the other fish see it fall, like a giant statue, like a building, but slowly, slowly, slowly. I focused my attention on the eye; I tried to reach down inside of it, toward the real whale, the dying whale, and I whispered, It's not your fault.

Miranda July, 'The Shared Patio' from No One Belongs Here More Than You