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Fish photo

August 16, 2019

Fish

Z Kennedy-Lopez

We amass, aquatic, shoal of the legless. The one grown webby with appendages pads onto the raspy sand, and we surface to see: gleeful and aroused with pity. Eyes so dry: the air all around but refusing to pass through us—we gasp to invite it in. 

The one gobbles and chews the air, then wheezes, I—was almost—right.

We laugh and cackle and wait, but the one does not return. They swallow more air. They swallow again, then again. They swallow continuously. Their hunger pries at our scales and makes us afraid. It makes us want. We spit and screech, and though they are clumsy, the one starts to swim across the sand. 

Blurry, blurrier, gone gone gone. 

Horrid, this buoyancy. We cannot look away.