Goldfish

by Marielle Asensio
photo by Ally Phillippi

We did drugs in your car first, in a supermarket parking lot.
Later, again, with your sister in her car in the driveway. I couldn’t stop

checking the time. ten minutes passed between 10:31 and 10:33
which then, inevitably, was lost in the skin around my fingernails.

I was homesick in the backseat, you were sick out the window.
the thrill had to promise the panic that we’d be just fine, just fine.

I grew strobe lights behind my eyes, and I shed the muscles in my legs.
I said please, I want to go home, but my face had already molted.

I scratched the stubborn skin off my fingers and finally drew blood.
You fished out that transmutation. Remade me into something vile.

If evolution always happened this quickly, the human condition would be self-doubt
whose hands are these? whose lungs?

I grew a swim bladder to please you and that’s what killed me,
I gave my thumbs away to pull water but I sank instead.

You dragged me out of my house and kept me in yours, a goldfish
sharing a room with cats. bad for the body, worse for the mind.

All of this to say that if I had gills, I’d be a better swimmer, but no better
of a smoker.

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