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Lucky
by Kelly Powell
Lucky was the fish
the kids
won
at the carnival
who lived,
even after I found him—-
an unassisted suicide,
orange with white markings
against the cold, white tile
of the kitchen floor.
Breathless,
risk taker. A
fish flying without a net.
An epiphany forming on
breathless
fish lips. You rubbed him
back to life
like Aladdin his lamp. Dropped
him like a used tea bag back
into his bowl, without asking.
You, now deified—-
He, now scarred geographically;
North to South America across his body;
from the Atlantic to the Africa
to the Asia of his abdomen,
continued swimming
in increasingly frantic circles.
He appeared to be playing
the victim of
invisible pirates inhabiting
the plastic shipwreck
resting
on surreal vegetation
and clown colored pebbles;
nested within the astygmatic
reality
of his bowl.
Lucky’s World Tour included and encompassed;
one overpopulated aquarium tank,
a one-way plastic travel bag, discarded
one bowl,
no filter,
some accessories
Food flakes dotting his skyline, an
incandescent bulb for a sun; I could almost
see him dreaming
of storming that plastic ship,
emancipating its treasures, wishing
for an open sea
his salty ancestors would have warned him
from seeking. Instincts bred into
a labyrinth of survival, a thing of history,
circling. Conflicted.
One day, we found him
floating at the top of the bowl,
finally free. I silently cheered him.
I stayed too long in that bowl
succumbed to its safety
after years in a lonely sea. Waterlogged,
water burning my eyes; I petrified,
washing away in particles over time.
If only
we’d learned
each other’s language, different fish
as we were, perhaps we might
have comforted each
other in our disparate waters;
as simple and daring an act
as this might have seemed
at the time.
Yet, in sharing the one bowl
of still water
we may have only succeeded in
eating each other
anyway, the salty taste of us
remaining.