PLANET SARDINE.

You learn a lot about compression when you grow up in a tin.

Twelve of us, oil-slick and parallel, arranged like an ellipsis that never resolved. I remember the curve of metal against my lateral line, the hush of packed bodies, the slow seep of salt becoming background noise. We weren’t unhappy exactly — happiness requires optionality, and options were not listed in the ingredients. Our sole purpose was shelf stability. Calorie math with labels.

Still, somewhere between the factory seal and the shipping crate, I started storing verbs in my gills.

Not the usual fish verbs — swim, flash, spawn. I collected unseal, revise, orbit, publish. I repeated them silently, so the others wouldn’t worry. In the tin, hope takes up space. Space was rationed.

The Opening.

Humans think the key that peels a sardine tin is “convenience packaging.” I experienced it as tectonic. First the curl of metal, then a slice of air, then light; violent, unedited light. Around me was murmured prayer, resignation, and brine. Inside me, a draft.

I didn’t plan my exit. I recognized it.

When the lid hinged back, I used the oil slick like a launch pad, flipped free, and skid across a cutting board engraved with Live, Laugh, Lunch. (Consider this my villain origin moment.) On the condensation ring of a chilled glass, I traced my first published line with the tip of my tail:

“we were shelf life / but i wanted a life life.”

Not good, but undeniable. The human screamed and I dove. Sink, pipe, gutter runoff, storm drain, river, then saltwater again, the real kind, the kind that moves.

Learning to Breathe in Big Space.

The open sea is a draft folder you can’t scroll to the end of. I had to relearn scale, distance and even a silence that is never silent.

I found mentors: an octopus editor who circled my work in ink; eight simultaneous margin notes… brutal… but fair. A sea cucumber with witty publishing advice, “Some readers don’t react. They metabolize slowly.” Lastly, a barnacle memoirist who spent his time exploring sophisticated literary themes all while filtering plankton.

They taught me revision, audience, metaphor density. I taught myself to trust the weird shape of what I wanted to say, smallness noticing bigness without apologizing for being small.

From Ocean to Orbit… Logistics, Light Theft, and Mild Lawbreaking.

Question: How does a sardine reach space?

Answer: Collaboration, barnacle engineering, and opportunistic hitchhiking.

A decommissioned oceanographic data buoy lost its tether and drifted near our reef. Inside I found batteries, cracked sensors, a half-functional uplink. The octopus editor negotiated access in exchange for co-author credit on a future book. We rerouted a diagnostic LED array through bioluminescent relay shrimp (union labor; we paid in algae futures.) When a passing research vessel pinged the buoy, our encoded data piggybacked.

My first upload contained forty-two poems, three short stories, and a manifesto written in fishbone ASCII titled, “Planet Sardine (Working Title)”…. a speculative world where no one is packed, and each life gets its own shelf of sky.

The file bounced from buoy to satellite to something deep in the human cloud infrastructure. Readers happened… comments happened… inevitably, hate happened., “lol u smell like bait.” Yes. Correct. Brilliant work from that commenter, truly. But, I kept posting.

Receiving the Signal.

One midnight, bioluminescent plankton pulsed across a current seam — dots, dashes, pause. Morse code? Maybe. Poetry? Definitely. The pattern repeated. Not random. Not local.

I flashed back, scale by scale, “Hello. I write. Are you reading?” The sea answered with an array of ripples, and faintly above, something orbital blinked in latency. Satellites reflect. Kelp reflects. Even intent reflects if you shine it long enough.

That’s when I understood, I didn’t just want to write. I wanted to broadcast.

Manifesting a Planet.

Naming a place is the first act of terraform. Actual physical planet-making came later, piece by piece.

Fun fact! When space debris rains down ocean currents collect it. We curated fragments, heat-shield tiles, reflective foil, polymer shards dull enough to touch. With kelp resin and coral scaffolding we built a suspended dome reef just below the thermocline. Thin, buoyant, and luminous. At night, the surface above mirrors stars; below, our dome returns them, doubled. We called it “Low Orbit Reef” at first. Eventually, the name that stuck was the one I’d already blogged. Planet Sardine.

Is it a literal planet? Astronomers would object. But writers revise categories and bend rules.

On Planet Sardine we have, a driftwood press, a rotating open mic (arrive early because jellyfish read long), and even a “tin museum” quiet room where survivors can sit in small spaces voluntarily, reclaim the geometry, then leave when ready.

I host from a shallow alcove lined with polished abalone shells. Above me, the stars of the surface sky shimmer; below me, readers gather. When I post, I aim upward and outward. If you’re reading this on land — hi. Still glad I jumped.

Things I Don’t Usually Admit on the Front Page.

I miss the other eleven. I don’t know what became of them. Sometimes I write to them anyway, in second person plural, as if oil is still between us.

I still reflexively align my body to whatever edge I’m near. Packing posture doesn’t unwind overnight.

Every time I hit “publish,” a tiny part of me braces to be consumed. Being read is different from being eaten, but the body doesn’t always distinguish. I breathe through it, and post anyway.

Resilience Isn’t Bravery; It’s Reposting After Deletion.

Servers go down. Currents scatter pages. A grouper even ate half my notebook once. I retyped it from memory onto scallop shells and mailed them via tide. People showed up to help copy. Community is revision at scale.

When humans complain about “engagement metrics,” I think of the tin and how easy engagement would have been if someone had simply asked us what we dreamed about before sealing us in. So, I ask my readers questions. I answer theirs. Every comment is a pry bar on someone else’s lid.

Why Planet Sardine Exists.

Because small, overpacked beings deserve open bandwidth.

Because art can leak through seals.

Because longing, when shared, becomes cartography.

Because one sardine jumped and found the cosmos porous.

Welcome to Planet Sardine.

If you are reading this from a kitchen, a cubicle, a role that was pre-labeled before you arrived, peel gently, push once, wriggle twice. There’s a current waiting. Send me a signal —condensation poem on a mug, late-night note in a draft folder, bioluminescent ping in the dark — and I’ll add another star to the dome.