Ritual Pesca-cide
my family wasn’t a pet family
not in the way of my friends’
not like those families on tv,
no dogs no cats
we, my sister and I, were not allowed
animals that needed freedom,
room to run or open spaces
no, we were, we were jailers only.
we caged multiple birds,
buddy g bird the first,
the second,
the third, also the longest lasting
like Brooks, preferring bars to freedom
then there were, in a repurposed aquarium
two gerbils, one black one white,
one mine one my sisters,
locked up tight, safe
imagine the surprise then
when one morning we woke to find only one,
one and, I should add,
a black pelt that looked suspiciously like mine.
my sister’s gerbil, merely licked it’s paws,
looking rather complicit in this crime of opportunity
while trying to clean the blood off it’s paws.
It was the many fish though,
small, golden fish, won at fairs
at carnivals
pleaded for at pet stores,
that had necessitated the glass bowl
I now found years later in the back of the cupboard
where my mother kept her glassware.
The glass fish bowl I took with me
some 15 years after the last fish had floated belly up.
My plan: 1) get a goldfish. 2) put in bowl. 3) liberally fill bowl with water.
I’d be a fish-guy, that fish-guy, the fish-guy,
I named it Cecil, the Goldest Fish.
I placed the food, in its jar, beside the bowl.
Cecil seemed happy swimming in circles,
circling is to fish as tail wagging is to dogs,
right?
it was soothing and relaxing, reassuring somehow,
all the things I needed it to be.
Liberally sprinkling fish flakes might just be the fountain of youth.
then I discovered something no one tells you when they hand over the plastic bag filled with water and fish,
fish aren’t the carefree pets they seem,
it’s not all fish flake sprinkling
oh no
that bowl very quickly starts to get cloudy
oh so murky and murkier and murkier still
watching your goldfish swim circles in clear water
is far more relaxing than watching your goldfish
dodge stringy floating goldfish shits
in the ever and always browning fishbowl water
which is why, during the third bowl cleaning,
separated from the second bowl cleaning by far longer than suggested
I had an idea, the idea, THAT idea.
lightbulb overhead, Cecil flopping in my bare hand
(which is how you remove a fish from its fish bowl
when you’ve lost the fish net
or never bought the fish net in the first place,
whichever it might be)
I decided to consign Cecil to be a scapegoat,
The scapegoat. MY scapegoat.
No more food, no more care,
one last cleaning and then
I’d begin to feed all my negative energy,
into this tiny, brainless fish I would funnel all of my harmful thoughts,
leaving behind only the positive and successful things,
Then, and only when Cecil had breathed his last, I would flush him into the wilderness,
full to bursting, with all that held me down.
I would be unburdened, I would be relieved
I would be raised up!
And so, in an unsurprisingly short period of time, the water went brown.
then browner and browner still,
until it was more riverbed then fish bowl.
Somehow, till Cecil swam, in circles
in an out of the murk Cecil swam
now instead of fish flake sprinkling,
my days began and ended with a simple question
is it over yet, was he still swimming?
then out of the murk would swim Cecil
and on he would swim,
the ritual sacrifice of one simple goldfish
lasting far longer than I was comfortable with.
When finally I stood over the toilet, recently deceased Cecil in recently discovered fish net,
(I had bought one evidently),
it occurred to me that quite possibly,
I tortured to death this innocent and defenceless fish
who now swam zombie circles around the toilet bowl
a sad tribute in death to its circular momentum in life
I watched on after it dissapeared from sight,
after the water had returned,
and settled, my own reflection staring back at me,
accusingly.
I’m not sure my karma ever recovered.
The cleansing of my spirit which I had anticipated never materialized.
Somehow I felt even heavier.
A couple of years later, I ended up with a cat
in retrospect, it seemed more my speed.