Fishtank.

Fishtank

Earth-heavy, dry as parchment,
cracked tongue and stiff lids,
we drag, we wake—we dream.

Her hallway becomes a giant fish tank.

He’s been gone
long enough for her to throw away
the red and gold bedspread (she never liked it
in the first place), gaudy and used and never
clean, for bills and plastic dishware
to pile up next to an oven that turns out
meals for one.

Long enough to feel alone.
I cannot blame them.
Can you blame them?

She just wants to touch him
with innocent ears and clean
hands, without
the world always—

Gulb, gulb, gulp…choke on it.

Shadowy ripples,
sand is not solid ground—
constancy, constantly.
Gone.

Is he the one tapping outside
the glass, long-fingered and puffy
cheeks, contorted circus face—or
suffocating within, tangled
among plastic weeds and artificial rocks
that look like kneecaps under snow?

She is alone.
He is one.

Without eyes that look past hers,
without lips that yell “You cunt”—

and she feels the hot handprint
across her cheek,
skin pulsing under a touch that’s harder
and warmer than she wants.
His bed is cold.

She wants to scream,
something loud and indefinite,
shapeless, formless, trees-without-
bark words—something like
something.

My heart, my heart
my heart hurts.

If I could tell you how hot
his tears were, salty and translucent,
when they hit her bare arm.
(She looks dewy and pink.)

If I could only tell you what
they felt—cold knife in the gut—when
everything started to…when it…

And he loves her, twisting the leaf-printed
sheets around his leg at night and eating
words.

If I could, if I—I
would scream.
He got tired of yelling.

Will he leak in through the cracks
in the door and overtake her?
Barricade it.

My lips are a moat.

Hand over mouth—but not air-tight, never
tight enough to keep it all in
when she needs it.


Pursed lips and wet fingers,
white slippered feet, finned feet.

Profanities echo up the stairwell,
empty—like a barren womb,
the knot in her stomach, the lump
in his hot throat, like when he said
“I love you.”

Bubbling and rising—green and liquid,
like the color of Neptune’s hair or his eyes
only darker.

In a fish tank
where our lungs are on the outside,
and fall apart—brittle as waterlogged sticks.
We are fleshy and grotesque
like a baby in the blue.

She is crying without tears, he is.
Lizard-like without the gills, scaly
and wet, in need of sun.
Tongue reflexes, flicks in and out

Out-in, out-in, out…

The crack in her window leaks
out air like a sieve and brings in tomorrow
and coldness, cold water that liquefies
her stomach—gelatin and acid.

They only feel awake
when they swim.
(But they can’t.)

We killed each other.

Drain out the tub,
plastic-plugged and contained.
Touch land with hollow feet and—
Breathe.