I screenshotted that photo from your story from the trip I couldn’t go on. The beatle on the water’s surface, carefully suspended, splayed out, trying not to go under. The water was a brilliant turquoise and so was the beatle, save for this sort of orange outline that surrounded its wings and legs. The way the light hit it in the photo, all the places its feet made contact with the water glowed. You took the photo while swimming in a cenote, risked your phone, but only I knew that. I wanted to talk to you about water and interfaces, these two distinct worlds and their shared surface — how they interact with each other, how scary it is to live in one and suddenly be sinking into another. Instead I replied, I think this is a stinkbug. I just wanted you to feel bad, I don’t know why. You made me want to scratch, gauge into your smooth, still surface. You said there’s no way. But I looked it up later and it was.


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