Pull the Shades
Amy Ashton Handy

Thoughts of the goldfish woke me again.

At sunrise I was thinking how they lived in Lubbock

when I saw them at a party.

posed as decorations,

each one in its own tiny bowl.

Someone had placed them before

electric lights, apocalyptic red,

in the hope, I think, that their golden scales

would fracture the light

like disco.

But they floated.

The light only soaked

into the water, stained it the color of poppies,

and the fish were as if stoned.

I thought:

Do they live?

Are they real?

until, bending forward, eyes wide, I saw.

The twitching gills, the listless flick of a tailfin

revealed – the horror – life;

the water like ink, the fish like blood-dipped gold.

So this morning I woke wishing to believe

that if I were they

I’d have made one dolphinian leap from the bowl,

escaped grapefruit sized hell,

and lain gasping wetly on the carpet