The ocean deposits body parts, strewn across the wet sand at water’s edge like abandoned memories. Tissues, organs, some fresh and mushy, their glutinous surfaces still pulsing. I scoop them into a bucket and assemble them in my garden shed.
My selection is precise: only two kidneys, but a single bladder; two lungs, but a single heart. Long coils of splotchy colon. A liver all purply in its lividity. I carefully arrange them on the potting table, placing them correctly: pancreas behind the stomach, above the spleen but just below the gall bladder.
I take pictures for my biology teacher, before decay sets in: the jellyfish-kidneys and the stringy kelp-colon will begin to smell soon; the sea cucumber-lungs and the anemone-heart will begin to dehydrate and shrivel. I clean it up before Mom sees it and screams.
I expect to get an A, though.
Ron Wetherington is a retired professor of anthropology living in Dallas, Texas. He has published a novel, Kiva (Sunstone Press), and numerous short fiction pieces in this second career. He also enjoys writing creative non-fiction. Read some of his work at https://www.rwetheri.com/.
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