20 Feb Both Things Can Be True
The abyssal anglerfish is a creature of the deep, living more than a mile beneath the surface in a world of darkness and pressure so intense that few things can survive it. She is small—no bigger than the palm of a hand—but built for the void. In the blackness, she carries her own flickering lantern, a light she makes for herself. Not to see, but to lure.
And yet, recently, near Tenerife, Spain, divers captured something never seen before: a living deep-sea anglerfish, gently swimming near the surface in broad daylight.
No one knows exactly why she left the depths, why she surrendered to the unknown. What they do know is that it would have taken weeks for her to rise, her body pushing against instincts written over millions of years. Maybe she was sick. Maybe the ocean itself is changing. Maybe both.
For a moment, she swam with rays of sunlight on her back, moving through a world she was never meant to see.
To the marine biologist, she is a warning. A sign of change—of the delicate, hidden systems beneath us unraveling in ways we’re only beginning to understand. There is fear in that, and sorrow too.
To the poet, she is a creature who made her own light, but at the end of her life, still reached for more. After a lifetime in darkness, she rose to meet the sun. There’s beauty in that, and hope too.
Both things can be true.
It is a reminder that hope and fear move together, as light and darkness always have—that something shaped by shadow can still be drawn toward brightness.
That we, too, can carry beauty and sorrow in the same breath.