i
This is not the first time; it won’t be the last. It’s a sort of catharsis. I pick apart a dead fish with my bare hands, leftovers from dinner at my parents’ house. I’m vegetarian, but they’d forgotten again and given me the cod I hadn’t touched at dinner in a clear Tupperware box to take home.
Lunch for tomorrow, they’d said.
I’m an expert at this now, picking out the bones from the soft white flesh. I stop when I’ve gotten most of them, like sewing needles in hand. I place them into an old Altoids tin where they sit among their older siblings, adopted from many previous dinners with my parents.
ii
I press them into my skin, drag them across the flesh of my arms. Nothing bleeds; I don’t bleed the way I yearn to. I’m afraid I can’t bleed at all, or that my blood isn’t red. I press until the fishbone snaps between my fingers.
iii
My mother’s eyes are fat and round, like ugly eggs. I am afraid one day I’ll become like that: old, caviar-eyed, and helpless. I am already weary of it all, too conscious of the way my lips resemble hers. It won’t be long before my eyes change, too.
I blame her as much as I blame myself for letting it happen.
iv
His eyes were like that, too. Fat and round. Glassy, with nothing behind them but a longing for something else.
Fish eyes.
He touched me like I might have the answers.
I didn’t. I don’t. My eyes are the same, just smaller and less obvious.
I am yearning for something, too, although I don’t know what. I dig for it inside the fish. Dig for it inside my skin. Dig for it in the words I say, the words I don’t.
But my eyes are the same.
v
It’s incurable.
I’m laughing at my reflection in the mirror, or maybe I’m crying. Maybe I’m performing, pretending someone is watching. It’s always easier when I pretend I’m being watched. It doesn’t hurt so much, then.
I want to cry or scream. Bleed over every surface of my house. Drown in it.
vi
I’ve watched it happen so many times it feels inevitable that it would happen to me too. I’ve known it since that first night. Dinner with my parents after being away at college for a year, and I realized they didn’t understand me anymore, that perhaps they never had in the first place.
“Fish,” they’d said, “pan-fried cod.”
I can’t eat fish. I can’t eat meat without it coming right back up.
But I’d said nothing of the sort. I sliced through the flesh easily with my knife, swallowed it all down with the bones. I thought it might be a funny way to die, choking on fish bones.
Instead of dying, I spent the night over the toilet, picking out the bones from my own vomit.
Something clicked, then. Me, the fish, and its bones.
The next time, it was cleaner. The time after that, cleaner still, bordering on a perfect crime, trophies kept inside an old Altoids tin, and remains picked up along with the trash on garbage day.
vii
I’m pressing into my skin, dragging across my flesh, pressing into my skin, digging into my thighs –
I can’t cry anymore.
I take my medication in the morning, swallow it down with a glass of water.
I’m pressing into my skin, dragging across my flesh, pressing into my skin, digging into my thighs –
I’m in the bath, wide-eyed, fish-eyed.
I can’t breathe.
I’m pressing into my skin, dragging across my flesh, pressing into my skin, digging into my thighs – I can’t breathe.
I’m pressing into my skin, dragging across my flesh, pressing into my skin, digging into my thighs – I can’t breathe.
I’m pressing into my skin, dragging across my flesh, pressing into my skin, digging into my thighs –
Somewhere, a fish dies.
viii
This is not the first time; it won’t be the last. It’s a sort of catharsis. Someone picks apart a dead fish with their bare hands, leftovers from dinner at their parents’ house.
ay is more concept than person, the moon itself or perhaps only existing as its halo.