Fifty-Two Blue

by Teddy Skye Garcia

I learned about a whale

Out in the ocean,

Somewhere,

called Fifty-Two Blue.

He’s called that because he sings his song at exactly fifty-two hertz.

No other whale sings that way.

They call him the loneliest whale on the planet.

They call him Fifty-Two Blue.

He’s alone.

He’s alone because he’s different.

Some would say unique.

But he’s alone nonetheless.

Whales use their songs to communicate

And though he sings, (and sing he does),

His song does not register as that of another

So the other whales pass it by.

He doesn’t know if he’s even a part of their same species.

Scientists don’t know either.

They’ve heard him sing, sure, but they haven’t been able to find him

Though, not many have tried.

There was a time where scientists thought they had found

Another Fifty-Two Blue,

Just like him,

somewhere in the ocean.

They heard a song so similar to the one of the loneliest whale, and they thought,

For a moment,

Maybe he wasn’t alone.

That there was someone just like him,

But, even if there was,

What

Could

They Do?

They were so far away.

Could they ever even come close to finding each other?

Or is it just that sound carries so far in the ocean,

That the song they heard was just the song of the

One and only,

Fifty-Two Blue,

Traveling across the ocean,

Looking for someone like him?

I spent some time

As A Fifty-Two Blue.

Calling out for others

Who could not hear me.

Desperate to find

Someone

Anyone

At all.

But looking back at my time as a Fifty-Two Blue,

I know now that

I was just deaf to their songs.

Much like they think the true Fifty-Two Blue may very well be.

Unable

Unwilling

To hear the songs of others

Flowing through the sea.

I don’t know how the story ends, if it even has one at all.

I don’t know if Fifty-Two Blue

ever finds a whale colony,

and gets taken in as one of them,

And then suddenly –

Everything's okay.

I don’t know,

And I won’t pretend to.

All I can say is what I

Want

to happen for Fifty-Two Blue.

Which is what happened for me.

I hope he finds a little colony.

And finds those like him.

but not in the ways one would first think.

And he’ll have found them in the most unlikely of places.

He’ll find them

In far off coral reefs,

In the dark depths of the ocean,

And in freezing water underneath the glaciers.

Discover them swimming near the beach on distant shores,

In water so salty it nearly flings them out of the sea.

And even so close to him that it was a

Wonder he’d never seen them swimming there before.

Maybe I don’t need someone just like me.

Or maybe I do.

If I found them, the one just like me, would I finally feel complete?

Or have the people around me

(the ones that I found, and those that found me right back)

Filled that space themselves?

Or have they just given me the chance to

Love myself as I am?

I can’t say for certain.

All I can say

Is that I hope that for those are singing out,

That they look in those unlikely places,

And that I send my love

And the best of my wishes

To the so-called “loneliest whale,”

Fifty-Two Blue