To Be a Goldfish

My dad has a tank in the dining room

And until last week it had been vacant for months,

But Tuesday my sister went to the pet store

And brought back five goldfish with her perfume.

Each time my eyes fall on them

I watch them flap their fins

As they swim aimlessly from place to place

Until someone takes the bottle and makes mayhem.

When I was younger, people would tell me

That a goldfish’s memory went back only three seconds.

Remembering the myth now as they smooch the glass

I can’t help but take a moment of silence and sympathy.

If there came a day when my mind was erased,

A hard drive wiped clean as a syringe before surgery,

I could no longer call the person that watches me in mirrors

The same name that was upon me placed.

If that person has never been jostled on a fair ride,

If that person has never forced her fingers to play a tune,

If that person has never laughed for hours about nothing,

Then the body of that person no longer has me inside.

That person who I hope never exists is a phone that can’t dial,

She can be guided to answer but miss what it means to call.

She would be trapped in the drawer with the old Chinese menus;

Studying, practicing and learning would become futile.

Life is full of miracles and seeing them walk by.

To be human is to hold on to and never let go of

The feeling of a nephew’s hand grasping your finger

Only hours after his fair skin has first touched the open sky.

To be a goldfish is to live within an abyss.

It’s to lose none, but gain even less.

If I am able to take one thing from this world,

I’d reserve my power to reminisce.