A pond in Maui turned pink

and it isn’t toxic algae but nor should we swim, eat the fish. A photo opp – but should we be smiling? Single cells, drunk on seawater-salinity, doubled. It’s an Archaea party! It’s, like, something from the Barbie movie: their cute choreography, her journey on a pastel rocket to rollerblade in a neon-pink fanny pack on the California seafront. A flushed capillary, viewed from drone shots. The sea, cut off at a footbridge. How real world isn’t what I thought it was. A magenta scrap of water in three jagged prongs. The 1990s pink shell suit I loved – until I learned love was only permitted in certain milieus. Entire multiplexes pink, doors spilling like ruptured vessels. Scientists investigating this boy like something from Barbie. Some abundances are signs of environmental stress. Halobacteria: so motile and lurid and salty. Snug in pinkness, florid in drought. Like they’ll overspill into this neon globe, UV-marbled in too-much sun. That shell suit, so pink it could tip the Pacific.