THE FISH YOU HAVE NEVER KNOWN WERE YOURS.

• Aisha Khan, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2019

Murky atramental colour is percolating out,
Vacuity in my throat of a drought,
Eventual drawing of the curtains. blackout.
A cacophony of a sound clustered bout,
Of; bleakness, and pity. A melancholic hangout.
Cerebrating shall help to ponder it without,
Rhythmic slamming. Splashsplashsplash, hollowed out.
Water concaving into pores of a throttled trout.
Spine of the body. Running upon the narrow stretch of doubt.
Gorging on, the strained hold of an impromptu blackout.
In a world of one’s own fabrication with charred sprinklers to burnout.
Swift and sudden scare of a child without limbs: CROSSED OUT.

Trout on the lap, and dripping milk of the vernal thighs,
BLENDING with the slapping of the scales,
Diamonds of refraction,
Technicolour mosaics build the theory that LIFE is utterly made up of death and love,
Clamouring love that holds the fish on your lap,
The death that shall ensue when the ABUSE OF SKIN on scale ceases,
And your mind drifts to the many a-times you have seen this animal,
The many times when you would call upon your mother,
To help lift it off you,
The WEIGHT of beating, doubling, and DOUBLING,
And it felt like your heart was decaying, and DECAYING,
You thought of YOURSELF as the fish. With the foreign tentacles on either sides of YOUR body.
And how it might feel, to feel LIMBS, NOT FINS.
To not know you EXIST or knowing the creature holding you.
And NO ONE knows your NAME, because you don’t have one, but you HAVE fins,
And SCALES.
And all the air INSIDE of you, that was CREEPING back out.
And as you CLOSED your EYES, and you felt your fins GIVE OUT,
You finally FELT the freedom, of being a CORPSE.
Of the now DEAD FLESH, that always smells ROTTEN, even when you were A L I V E.
And your now DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD heart that PUMPS THE REMAINING DROPLETS OF GAS AND BLOOD,

to a deoxygenated mind that is now extinct of thought, of instinct,
you are nothing now, just another fish on the piles of your fellow soldiers. people or fish ..? you could never deduce,
which eyes were blinking and which weren’t.
growing up, your mother would tell you that fish never blinked.
but you looked around, and every ‘person’ you met. every carcass, corpse, entity, vessel.
they never blinked. they carelessly looked over your body to find the faults that reflected from their own empty eyes. In death and in life, our eyes will always remain plundered. like everyone’s mother was the pirate.

do you know who you are
?

do you flounder daybyday, with fins
?
or limbs
?

have you ever seen the difference
?

of the fish markets
?
and a graveyard
?

with piles of bodies layered
?
with dirt & filth
?

these questions will always wrap your mind
.
and grasp to the very inches of your soul
.
until you are just another body
in a market
in a grave

and you will
never,
not ever,
know the difference.