Featured in Farrago Magazine Edition Three 2026 as part of the Path to Nirvana column

Artwork by Jacaranda Liu

I once was washed upon a beach

that scorched and stretched beneath the Sun.

The cold blue sky burned white with heat,

salvation seemed to never come.

But near my body, sand embalmed—

a lobster bright and blue as jade,

entrenched in foam, yet poised and calm

before the roaring clash of waves.

In dying hope to save myself,

I begged the lobster for advice.

“For how can I survive this hell?”

Arcane as wind, its voice replied:

“Ten thousand lives I’d lived and died,

and I had struggled as you do.

Each time, I had moulted my hide—

my skeleton, a hardened jewel.

I'll tell you why you suffer so:

the ocean, you were born into,

a garden nestled deep below,

the gentle waters of a womb.

And since that innocence is gone—

your Eden, now a distant hearth.

The foreign Sun shines on, forlorn,

deserted in the universe.

Above the shining Milky Way,

the planets and the stars explode,

and from their graves, new stars are made,

an ancient lesson, learned and told.

So, like the stars and nebulae,

you too must let your old self die,

and from the fires be born again.

Transform, evolve, and then survive.

One day, you will begin to rise,

and on your feet you’ll leave this shore.

Perhaps, you’ll find a paradise—

Nirvana, life, forevermore.”