A young man was walking along the shore and saw a beach upon which thousands and thousands of starfish had washed ashore. It seemed to him that if he did not keep his pace quick, the starfish oozed closer to his toes, although he never actually caught one of them moving. They seemed always to have just been moving. Red and puckered hands covering the beach. Silent mouths pressed into the sand.

A starfish is a hand and a mouth. A starfish is two things: hunger, and feeding that hunger. A starfish always wraps its arms around its meals, only embraces the things it kills. There is no mind to say “yes” or “no” or “I.” A starfish is a walking eyeless stomach. A starfish is one appetite with a thousand mouths.

Further along the beach he saw an old man with brown hands, walking slowly and stopping often, picking up one starfish after another and tossing each one gently into the ocean.

“Why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?” he asked.

“Why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?” the old man said.

The young man paused. “I’m sorry if I offended you,” he said. “I was only asking a question.”

“Asking a question,” the old man said. His eyes were closed, the young man realized, and his lips were moving constantly, soft and flabby, smacking against one another in continuous motion.

“The sun is up,” the old man said. “The sun is up and the tide is going out. The sun is hot and the sun has no pity and the red hands belong in the sea.”

“The red hands like you,” the old man said without opening his eyes. “It’s good when they like you.”

“Old man,” the young man said in the young voice living in his red throat, “don’t you realize there are miles of beach and starfish all along it? You can’t possibly save them all. You can’t even save one-tenth of them. In fact, even if you work all day, your efforts won’t make any difference at all.”

The young man looked down at his feet, and couldn’t see the sand for all the red that covered it. The beach wasn’t covered in red hands at all. There was one red hand, with many bodies. One hunger, many mouths. No plural. No many. No I.

The old man listened calmly and then bent down to pick up another starfish and threw it into the sea. “This isn’t saving. This is obedience.”

There was no sand to walk on. There was no place to go to.