Once, I killed a fish.
More than once, if you count
the 22 goldfish I accidentally
overfed before the ick took over,
slime around their fins, their mouths,
their boredom, clustering
on their backs until every one of them
rotted within captivity. I swore,
then, I’d never own a fish again,
(as if “owning” a living thing
is an affordable injustice),
the same way I swore
I would never eat something
with a nerve ending.
I was younger that time,
fishing in a little pond, my hook
lodged in the throat of a sunfish.
And though I strived to save it,
grasping it by the neck
the way I’d learned from television
sportsmen, intestines oozed from
its lips, simmered in my hands
while I wrenched the barb out, hoping
to undo the damage I’d done,
confused about where the blood
originated, whether from a being
I hurt, or my fingers sliced by its gills.
The ungodliness of it.
The waste when I threw it back in,
hoping it would flop off, splash a bit,
distract the calm of the tight-lipped
basin judging me from the morality of
its own and ancient place. The creature,
abandoned by its school, still bleeding,
lay like a statement, bloated as history,
an unanswered prayer, so dead that,
years later, I still could not look into any
body of water without seeing accusation,
my very reflection having turned carnivorous,
nibbling at the edges of something more
honest with itself, something better than me—
each of us recognizing we exist within
thin walls of shared experience, alive under
the same glass sky, knowing some of us
arrive armed with intention,
others are just trying to survive.
Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt, copyright August 17, 2024, all rights reserved
Posted in Katherine's Coffeehouse
