Fish can’t close their eyes.

The stingray at the zoo got pregnant without a male stingray.

My first memory was a car crash.

I was reading The Little Fish That Got Away.

An embryo is a maybe-baby.

My first embryo died attached to my womb.

To get her out required a lot of blood.

Toothed whales go through menopause.

Getting pregnant without a partner is called parthenogenesis.

Or sperm donation. Or embryo donation.

My second memory is of my third birthday.

My parents took me to the Puget Sound to feed the seabirds.

My second and third embryos died floating loose in my womb.

Hemoglobin gives blood its “grenadine sheen.”

Whales went back to the water because that’s where the fish were.

Embryos are fish-like when they first become fetuses.

Their eyes are on the sides of their head.

An orca carried her dead calf for 17 days and 1,000 miles.

The calf died because the salmon are dying.

The stingray’s babies will almost certainly die too.

Evolving back into the water is called secondary aquaticism.

Our blood is almost as salty as the ocean.

Maybe someday we’ll go back too.

Meredith Kirkwood lives and writes in the Lents neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Iron Horse Literary Review, Sky Island Journal, Rogue Agent, Variant Literature, ONE ART, and Doubleback Review, among others. Find her on the web at www.meredithkirkwood.net.