I confess my sins

to the whale shark at the Georgia aquarium.
In this version of the world there are no crowds. 
No people packed shoulder-to-shoulder maskless.
Here the outside does not matter 
There are no other fish, no shoaling of fluttering silver.

Just the Whale Shark and I and 
as he swims in lazy circles
I tell him that every time I've gone into the ocean
I've shrunk further and further within myself
and I want to buy a beachside cottage 
just so I can continue to shrivel.

I ask him if he knows how far the world stretches beyond this
and then I ask him if he cares
I tell him of the great Pacific Garbage patch the size of Texas 
I've been to neither but I am willing to throw myself 
into the middle of each and let the sun flay me alive
if that makes up for everything the world has done.
He doesn't answer

When it's late at night and I've either not fallen asleep yet 
or woken up hours before my alarm 
I put on the livestream camera the Georgia aquarium 
has set up over the tank 
and I watch him swim in lazy circles
until it flutters my eyelids to sleep.

Is he more whale or shark?
Can he continue to live if he does not move?
Does he ever stop swimming in circles
I watch unblinking from the couch until my breathing starts to slow,
remember the nights that it came close to stopping

Whale Shark, I notice that you never come close to the edges.
is it because you've noticed the glass 
slick as that might be?
It is safe here but at what cost?

I jump in top of the tank and swim down 
grab on to your back as if I were a sucker fish 
pretend what we have is symbiotic instead of parasocial
and later vomit up 6.3 million gallons of seawater.