Blue Whale

Blue Whale is an internet game involving a series of
tasks that end in suicide, invented by Philipp Budeikin.

Blue Whale

It appears
in Budeikin’s brain.
Its baleen plates will filter
the worthless krill from society,
he envisages.
Swimming alone,
it catches teens.

It challenges Varun
in the ocean of dejection.
He takes on the tasks:
listens
to the lunatic music,
climbs
on a crane,
engraves
a red whale
on his arm
with a pair of compasses…
On the fiftieth day,
he undertakes
the last task
and falls into death
from the top of his broken psyche.

Baffling the whalers,
the blue whale swims
with its mouth open.

First published in The Literary Hatchet