Sea Jelly
By Mira Patel
It was a season of jellyfish again—
the shoreline salted with their soft protests,
gelatinous ghosts in rows,
slumped like used punctuation.
Clear domes like collapsed lungs,
frilled at the edges
like sari hems in rain.
Some shimmered with violet ribbons
like garlands from a wedding
no one wanted to attend.
A boy on the beach kicked one
with the practiced boredom of summer.
He said they don’t sting unless they’re mad.
He was ten. I believed him.
My mother told me never to touch them.
“They remember everything,” she said,
though what she meant was:
things that float
can still ruin you.
I stood knee-deep,
watching them pulse like breath,
watching them undulate
like they were mourning
in slow motion.
One brushed my calf—
a glancing kiss,
no pain, just a thrill
like someone had said my name
in a language I almost knew.
I thought about the time
my son latched to my breast,
his jaw clamped
as if hunger were a kind of grief.
He was just born
but already ancient in the way
all babies are.
Open-mouthed. Demanding.
Heir to something I could never explain.
Back then, my chest ached
in rhythms I hadn’t learned to name.
Now, jellyfish float
in that same sacred pace—
no heart, no spine,
just mouth and motion,
just an urge to return to the sea
before the body forgets
how to be water.Mira Patel is a poet and essayist living near the California coast with her two sons and an unusually opinionated cat. Her chapbook The Salt Left Behind explores motherhood, myth, and the marine world. She teaches workshops on writing the body and is working on a full-length collection due in 2026.
