lunch

I felt like a fish that’d been spooned out of its tank in a gentle manner, still in a little pool of water to keep it breathing, only to be violently skewered by a knife into a wall. And it stays there, squirming and suspended, halfway up a whiteboard, dripping down water and blood and completely out of options.

Actually, maybe I felt like a similar fish, maybe not one that’d probably been egged out in a tank, but swam the oceans, only to be snared by a trawler net, and then to be put in a tank and then removed and pinned to a wall. There isn’t perhaps much difference between the two, only that one would hope that the second knew the feel of freedom before death.

Even that’s not right. I’m a fish, stabbed and pinned to the floor of the tank, and so are all the other fish in the tank. They all turn violent, and end up biting each other’s heads off – starting with mine, though in no particular order. Only that I’m half as bulbous and twice as meek.

No, I’m a fish in a music video. Tossed out of the water to twitch and tumble, but at the altar of entertainment, documented and filed away with no guarantees of being a single-take scene. It’ll happen again and again, until either the air-pocked and wasted lungs give way, or is haggardly rejected and flushed down the toilet.

I’m fry, picked up by a brushy whale. The irony wouldn’t escape me. I wouldn’t mind sacrificing myself as a pellet of indigestion bubbling up to the surface. It may hurt a bit, but it’ll be over soon.

I am a fish scrutinized by a ten year old snot, clutching a crumpled note and clawing at the feet of commerce. This shit owns a piranha, and feeds other fish to it. Is death preferable to rejection? Why, do I not live up to the brat’s standards? Am I not worthy of being eaten in an unclean, hazy tank?

I am a fish, sucked dry by mosquitoes and sizzling on an electric plastic tennis racquet. Bobbed up and batted out.

But there’s always tomorrow. And the rest of a lifespan to see out.

I’m a fish, and I’m all at sea.