I remember the night I met you
We sat on the porch and smoked cigarettes
I asked you about music
We understood each other right then
Today, thinking of you, I remember that life can be war
Unrelenting
Crueler than humans one by one
It’s an onslaught, unforgiving
You knew despair, you told me
You were a songwriter
In this dream, we are all together. It’s December and I miss you. I am not going to believe I won’t see you.
Tonight, you’re just outside the front door, I can hear you. You’ve got on that tweed coat, the one that’s almost yellow, with the thin black lines, and you’re smoking. You’re so elegant out there on the porch, talking in between exhaling, waiting for dinner to start. You say something self-deprecating, make that sound like a “tff,” you’ve dismissed something you just said. You laugh while you set down your drink.
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
It’s so clever how they set up these beds
With little bars on the sides
A man arrives and puts it together like he’s done it 10 trillion terrible times
He’s young and probably working for his family
Drives all day to set up and take down the world’s saddest furniture
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