Family

These jellyfish float around on their white, twinkling caps, all directions at once, like snowflakes who don't pay any attention to gravity or wind. They open their hearts to the water, wrap themselves around it, and move. The smallest one, there in the back, has an underbelly of light and lacy tentacles tangling and straightening, pulsing with its own rhythm. It has no notion of that one's rhythm. It doesn't need to know.

And from the outside, with paying customers milling about, staring at the animals in their tanks, all seems silent. The jellies back up, back up, back up for hours, and never say a thing. Not when they collide. Not when one pushes another into the glass. Not when one starts to sing over another one's song and not when one corrects another's addition and not when one takes the last muffin from the kitchen.

If they react at all, it's only to gently give way. They lean and dance to one side, finding a new current that's exactly as satisfying as the last.

I back away from the thick, bluish glass: I've been extracted from an alien planet where touch is the only communicator and sound is nothing. The jellies billow and swoon, billow and swoon, eternally, no offense taken.

If they're a family, they know nothing of scowls or stomps. They are pillows. They are caresses. They are so quiet above all else.

But maybe not all is to be envied. Maybe not all is to be loved. Don't they trail venomous cells and stinging arms?

We all make ourselves heard, eventually.