The Shape of Life

THE SHAPE OF LIFE

by Jo Telle

(Content warning: grief, death of a loved one, implied cancer)

When I heard you were dying, I threw myself into the ocean. I turned into a triton snail to hide, blocking out the nurse’s voice. They started to say that you wouldn’t be in your present form for much longer, but I couldn’t hear it anymore. 

You would have been impressed by my ability to mimic the brown and yellow colours and the delicate spires and grooves of the shell. So lifelike was my imitation that other molluscs kept their distance from me. Perhaps out of fear, or perhaps they could sense my sadness. Just as you taught me to be honest with who I am, you also taught me to be mindful; animals and creatures that share the forms we take fear their fellow beasts displaying emotions they can't comprehend. All my life, you'd shown me when to live openly and when to hide. In my shell, I needed you to tell me what to do, how to live. But now, you couldn't even tell yourself how to live.

I thought our kind was protected by our ability to change. Shifting the atoms and the cells in our bodies, transforming to keep ourselves safe from people who might attack us for their perception of our minor differences. 

“Their refusal to imagine a world larger than them is not your responsibility,” you said, “but your own protection is.”

We were leatherback sea turtles when you told me this, protecting my vulnerable body as I crawled out to sea. It was one of your favourite forms, back when you still could take on other forms. 

From there, we went to the park. You pushed me on the swings. I was young, so were you. Or at least, if not young, you were at an age that the concept of your death was incomprehensible to me. 

In your human form you told me, “If someone calls you awful names and chases you on the swings, then all you have to do is swing your body high, let go, and fly away as a monarch butterfly.”

I wish you had told me that our ability to become what is wanted, needed, or expected of us only works to protect us from dangers outside of our bodies. Even though our ability grants our immune systems abnormally strong defences, there are still innumerable ways our bodies can seek to destroy us from the inside out.

I learned first-hand what destroying a body feels like. As a triton snail, I sought out a crown-of-thorns starfish to satiate my hunger and rage. I tore the starfish apart, spine by spine, plate by plate. Much the same way as the disease that ravaged your body, system by system, stripping you of your very essence. I had hoped my violence would satiate or calm me, but I was left with an emptiness and a reminder of a truth I couldn’t avoid.

I may not have wanted to hear the truth, but I was certainly not ready to let you go. I crawled out of the shell and carried it with me to the surface. Carefully wedged in my mouth, I shifted from snail to manta ray, using the creature's natural ability to breach the water. As my slippery black and white skin broke through the surface, I launched myself into the air as a golden eagle. Admittedly it was never one of your favourite forms—their aggressive, predatory behaviour didn't suit you—but I was determined to get to you as quickly as I could with the triton snail shell grasped tightly within my talons.

Your hospital window had been left open, the smell of the ocean filling your yellow and tan room. Anything to coax you to stay here for even a minute longer. 

I set the shell down beside your bed, in case you wanted to hear the ocean one last time. Your IV bag was nearly depleted, so I poured myself into it and carried much-needed nutrients into your veins. 

Once inside your body, I could see for myself that there was no stopping the forces at work that had set out to rob me of you. I took up sword and shield, armoured myself with your white blood cells, and I waged war in your name. Within seconds of reaching the front line, I took one blow to the chest and the armour was stripped from my form. Over and over I rushed back into the fray, but your white blood cells were too weak to help, and I was purged from your system. It wasn’t the disease I had been fighting, it was you. 

Even still, I would not be deterred in my efforts. You may have given up, but I wasn’t ready to. I became the incomplete numbers in your sudoku book that you used the past few years to keep your brain working the way it should. I threw myself at the health monitors flanking either side of your head, glowing red and green with your vital signs. I sought to rearrange myself as numbers on the screen to raise your heart rate and lower your blood pressure, even artificially. A faint voice told me there was nothing more I could do for you. I heard it, but I still wasn’t ready to listen.

Your body won every battle I waged at you, for you. I became your oxygen tube, and you ripped me out. I became the rainbow handkerchief quilt—the one you wrapped me in when I was still afraid of lightning—and you threw me off your hospital bed. I became ice chips for you to swallow, but you chewed me up, then spat me out. 

Your efforts forced me to resign, to give up, to accept defeat. But with your lessons in survival, you also taught me to be as stubborn as you. 

I curled up at the foot of your bed as your Bombay cat that passed away a year ago, hoping a familiar friend would bring comfort to you if not revive you. I made my way up from the foot of your bed to the narrow space between your arm and your torso. I sought to cradle myself in your arms one last time. You paid no attention to my pawing or my purring. You paid no attention to me at all. 

The nurses came in and told me that your time was drawing near. I was all out of forms, all out of tricks. The faint voice told me it was time to take one last form. 

I held your hand in mine, taking my true form for the first time since watching over your failing body. Your paper-thin skin and veiny hand felt so fragile. I set your hand back down on your bed so I wouldn’t break it. The slight movement caused you to stir, and I rose to look for any sign of life in your eyes. You opened them and looked upon my face. 

“There you are,” you said, through laboured breaths. “I’ve seen you in a hundred forms and a hundred faces, but yours is the one I’ve been waiting to see this whole time.” 

I held your frail hand, bringing it up to my face. I readied myself for what was to come, as you often shared in your human form the truths I needed to hear but wasn't ready for. “Remember,” you said, pausing to catch your breath. “Remember the monarchs.” 

Some time ago, we spent an afternoon together as monarch butterflies. You took me to the reservoir, the one where we rode pedal boats before I learned to transform. Opposite the brightly coloured docked boats, you gestured at a shell latched onto a branch. You told me something I was too young to understand then.

“There is no escaping the final form we must all take. Do not fear it. Embrace it. And remember, no matter how many forms you desire to take, do not let others stop you from living your truest form. Not even me. Your truest form is a gift. Revel in it, my little butterfly.” 

In that tiny hospital room, I lightly squeezed your hand to indicate that I remembered. A smile swept through your face before an ocean breeze washed it away as it swirled around the hospital room. The slight wind caused the seashell beside you to sing softly and gently as your eyes closed. Your arm went limp in my hand, and the monitors on either side of you grew quiet. 

The desire to climb back into the shell was stronger than anything I’d ever felt. The ocean breeze continued to swirl around the hospital room, lifting me off the ground and pulling me towards the window. 

Just outside the window, I saw the breeze start to take on a shape, the same way you had when you first taught me so many years ago. From the breeze, red, orange, and yellow feathers formed across your wings and a long trailing green, blue, and purple tail extended from your torso. You looked back at me, with your warm blue eyes and the same familiar smile. You held this smile, not as long as I would have wanted, before you turned, and I watched your final form fly away.

JO TELLE (she/they) is a Black, queer, trans femme writer based in Brooklyn, transplanted from California. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Rutgers University - Newark, is a graduate of Clarion West class of 2023 and is a 2024 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices Fellow. Her writing centers QTBIPOC characters’ lives, experiences and relationships as they are challenged to dwell in the ordinary or to revel in the spectacular. At any given time she is thinking about her next tattoo. It’s probably another dinosaur. Their writing can be found in FIYAH and The Bitchin’ Kitsch. Their Twitter handle is @jjtelle.

The Shape of Life was edited by ViNa Nguyễn. It can be found in Tales & Feathers Volume 3.