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She arcs gracefully through the gate, and the kids squeal.
I stay behind, knee-deep in the smaller medical pool with a net and a scoop, left to clean and prep for the next feeding.
The seal encounter soundtrack pipes through hidden speakers, upbeat and oceanic, like a movie about adventure and discovery.
I know every swell of the strings, every canned splash sound effect. I’ve heard it so often it doesn’t register anymore—white noise that fills the silence where my thoughts should be.
The wetsuit pinches under my arms and rides up at my thighs. Sleeveless, unforgiving.
It isn’t made for bodies like mine, not really.
I call myselfbig-bonedwhen I’m joking, but the truth is I’ve got thick legs, wide hips, and an ass that could stop traffic.
My Irish grandmother’s gift, alive and well on my thirty-three-year-old, five-foot five-inch frame.
Some days I wear my extra curves like armor.
Other days—days like this—it feels like another cage, just like the ones we keep our rescues in.
If I haven’t learned to love this body by now, maybe I never will.
I scrub at the slick edge of the pool, my reflection breaking into ripples with every stroke of the brush.
The smell of fish guts and bleach clings to my skin, and under it all is the sharp sting of helplessness.
I’m supposed to love this.
The ocean, the animals, the work.
And I do, but it feels like loving something through glass—frustrated, one step removed.
Conservation, rehabilitation, education—all just pretty words that keep us from saying the truth.
We’re just buying time while the wild places vanish.
And nothing could chill me to the bone more than that realization.
I turn my gaze to the crowd hidden just behind the huge privacy wall.
If I shift a little to the right, I can see them through a hairline crack—parents balancing cell phones, kids sticky with cotton candy, teachers doing roll call with the voices of the already defeated.
They see fun.
A spectacle.
Something to post online before moving on to the next exhibit.
They don’t see Aggie’s eyes when the pool gate shuts behind her.
They don’t see how she pauses before diving, as if she can feel the invisible bars hemming her in.
They don’t see how wrong it feels, a creature made for endless horizons trapped in a concrete circle.
I see it.
I feel it.
And I can’t do a damn thing to change it.
