I did not realize
until right now
that you
and I
have
known
each
other
this
well
for
this
long.
That’s what friends do
Rearrange your perspective
Help you find where you stand
My friend,
It’s a better world you let me live in
It’s a better world
this
has a taste
like the color of an echo
rafting at a waterfall
illuminated,
the texture would be
like the scent of snow
inside a hologram.
if you could puff
a milkshake
of butterflies,
you’d know it
Just like lawn mowers machete over innocent grassland,
the trains in Mr. Mallory’s city grated along their metallic tracks,
tearing through all atoms of stillness to set a pace for the day
Standing on the platform
Mr. Mallory rested his arm across the length of his flappy leather satchel
and analyzed the concrete
We have a fat fish
Right now
he is wedged under a piece of pretend wood
at the bottom of his aquarium
His extremely tiny mouth is opening like
a heart valve, again and again and again
In a rhythm making life happen
I’m waiting for him to die
Because he’s not really fat
He’s actually sick
About a week ago our other fish,
the one who had a crooked back,
floated to the top of the water
and didn’t move his mouth anymore
Then this guy just puffed up
His body, his stomach, has stretched out
Like a ball of sad is stuck inside
Before this, he swam around
Now he stays in one place,
either at the top of the tank
or down in the fake flora
I just went to look at him
At this moment, he’s resting on the rocks
Tail and fins still as a skyline
Only the mouth moving, opening, opening, opening
He looks like a horror movie
When his friend died,
I looked into the tank and saw
that the eyes had gone white
Cloudy
The little gills weren’t pulsing
So I scooped him out with a ladle
and buried him under the maple tree outside
After I put the dirt on,
I was afraid he wasn’t ready,
so I dug him back up
To make sure he was fully finished
He didn’t move
He was covered in soil
I buried him again
Poured some water on the tree
Told him he was a really good fish
Oh my god
I just checked on our fat fish again
He’s caught in the plastic fern branches
The little mouth is panting still
His black eyes are enormous,
glossy and half silver and pleading
I drew a heart for him on the glass
Where he is facing
Now I will wait with him
Play music as the night goes on
Because I think tomorrow he will not hear it
I will bury him at the maple tree too
Setting Sail
In a perky white sailor hat, I waved goodbye to the shore
Smiling and cupping my hand like Little Miss Mermaid Lagoon
Waves crashed and soared around my tiny boat
Following my heart across the Atlantic
There was a big red heart on the couch
Some scissors came and cut the whole thing out and composted it
So it spent the night in a spinach-and-paper towel sleeping bag
Under an aluminum tent top
It spent the whole night there, being sad
Being like a big, cut-out heart in some garbage
Trash that slowly decomposed
Heart kept dreaming all the time, half-awake, half-decomposed
Not knowing whether to wake the dog
Or the girl
Only sure to stay alive
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