Sympathy for the Shark

I dislocated my shoulder three weeks ago climbing out of a pond.

Yesterday, I came out of my sling.

This morning, I started my home physical therapy.

I was standing in front of a white pillar, my lame arm bent at 90 degrees and pushing against a white towel into the pillar. Down my weak side I felt a tugging of muscles, pulling over my side ribs. Gills, I thought. Those are my gills. This is what it feels like to have gills, to have the water tug against them, to feel the resistance of the current, the heavy power of the water. I am a shark, I realized, my body strong and blunt. I felt the unity of my movement. The white pillar, which before had been a Yukon snowstorm, became the ocean. I was facing down these were the ocean depths. My mouth hung open, slackjawed. I felt vaguely hungry. The white pillar two feet in front of my face widened and pulsed. In the psychedelia of my eyes, a little green fish was swimming toward me. It would be good to eat that fish, I thought.

And not at all wrong.