I’m sorry—first of all. When you splashed back into the water, it sounded like it hurt. The splash swept over the sides of the canoe and soaked the tips of my boots; bubbles drifted up as you sank, like the bubbles in my best friend’s glass of Coca-Cola. Carbonated water—that’s what the River was that night. Sweet in the air—my teeth were aching; I clenched my jaw.
When you splashed back into the water, it looked like it hurt. I know I threw you back in, but before you get mad, you should know the context behind my actions.
1. I didn’t want to go in the first place.
My family and I had been in the Amazon for three straight days, and we were tired. Not bored of any of it, but tired. We’d spent the entirety of the last few days out on the water, with the mosquitoes nipping at us, the macaws screeching in our ears, the sun beating down.
The guides decided to take us for a canoe ride on our last night. We hadn’t gone out on the water yet in the dark, and I didn’t want to go. I was tired. I wanted to sleep. The day after tomorrow, we’d leave this corner of Peru and travel to another. I was ready.
You might not know this, Crocodile, because the River is your home, but most people only see the Amazon River once—if at all.
So my family and I boarded the canoe with the guides and we launched off of the shore.
2. The stars were beautiful that night.
Can you see the stars, Crocodile? Can you twist your serrated eyes, and look up? If not, or even if so, I’ll explain them to you anyway.
That night, they were the glimmers of a water snake’s scales when it weeds through the water, sun rays piercing through the green murkiness, and reflecting off its plated body. The stars were tiny freckles of light hanging in a sky as black as your River.
I tried to take a picture, but all I got was a dark square. I spent ten minutes afterwards playing with the settings on my phone before dragging the exposure down all the way. All I got was a circle of stars you could barely see. Instead, I had to gather up the stars and put them in my memory.
The canoe needled through the water, and the guides were scanning the river banks with their flashlights, illuminating plants I’d seen earlier in the day, but were only now looking alien. Stalks and fuzz that became yellow, then purple, then black in the second the light swept over them.
3. The guides found you, Crocodile—not me.
The ride passed in silence, until a flashlight found a red dot in the distance, and the boat began to turn towards it. A crocodile eye, I later learned, glows red when confronted with LED lights. You could’ve blinked.
Why didn’t you blink?
4. If you had swam away with the other crocodile, none of this would’ve happened.
When we found you, there was a larger crocodile that swam away. He wasn’t bigger by a lot—just enough you could spot the difference. I thought you two might be sharing the same hunting ground, basking in the starlight hitting the water. In the glance I got of him, his scales looked like hardened emeralds, his skin the fabric they were sewn onto.
I can only imagine you two were out hunting for mosquitoes or even fireflies. Your friend swam away when we struck out paddle down near him, skewering the water.
You were alone when we caught you.
5. The guides captured you, not me.
They lifted you out of the water—you were the length of a bedtime pillow, your teeth tiny filled V’s, your eyes glowing red, then yellow, then not at all. Emerald scales dripping carbonated water. They handed you to me.
You wriggled in my hands like a worm out of soil, opened your jaw; tiny V’s. Your underbelly scales felt softer than the ones on your back. You looked at me. I looked at you.
My mom said, “Smile for a picture!” and I did, but when the flash of her phone went off, you thrashed, and the picture came out as a blurry struggle between us, my teeth gritted, yours bared.
Eventually, the guides told me to throw you back into the water. Maybe you’ve been caught before, because you seemed to understand what they meant. You dropped your jaw again—a silent threat—before wiggling in my hands, trying to get back to freedom.
I held onto you, until I dropped you.
You crashed into the River like a cannonball, bellyflopping, your crocodile arms spread wide as you hit the water.
The splash flowed over the sides of the boat, and I winced. Everyone else on the canoe laughed. A crocodile had just bellyflopped into the Amazon River, and wasn’t that just hilarious?
But I felt bad. It must’ve hurt, crashing back into the water, having it overwhelm you as you sunk down, down, down. I hope your tummy didn’t bruise after.
You were the last crocodile of the night, you know. The last one I saw on the Amazon River. I left the next day, and didn’t see a single one besides you.
6. It’s not my fault.
Look up at the stars. I’m looking with you, five thousand miles away, back home.
You see glimmers from water snake scales, and I see sunlight reflected off snow—or tiny diamonds stitched into the sky, the buz of a city below them. But still, Crocodile, we’re looking up at the same stars. We’re seeing the same thing from different places in our different homes.
It’s not my fault, Crocodile—you have to believe me. It was the guides; they caught you. It was my parents; they forced me to come along. It was my best friend—who convinced me to get on the flight to Peru. It was the national park that allowed us to catch you. Blame them, Crocodile, because it wasn’t me. I might’ve held you and thrown you back in, but I didn’t mean to hurt you, everyone else is guilty, it’s their fault, blame the flashlight the guides anything but me please, I—
Dear Crocodile,
I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
The Etymos Review 
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