Like other ordinary couples who were once everything and nothing to each other, Tim and I went through phases. Aquatic phases, to be exact. The first night he came over, I had no fish. Then after a month, Tim brought a goldfish with him. Orange and overfed, it oscillated when he climbed up the stairs. A ping pong ball wearing a translucent skirt. It swam sideways, puffing bubbles beneath the cucumber prints of a six-quart IKEA Ziploc bag. The goldfish stayed, but we came and went. The flat felt as permanently cold even with Tim and the fish as it had with just me. So I gave up dreaming. Nights on the sofa, with the curtains drawn and lights turned off, the obese fish was gauging space in another dimension. I aimed the flashlight on my phone at the bowl and watched the goldfish swim. Scales sparkled, gills opened and closed like the palpitation of a weak heart. Half-nibbled pellets and tiny bits of poop disintegrated into miniscule particles, tadpoles or sperms. I survived many nightmares by the goldfish. With and without Tim. We ended up naming him Son. Misguided, proud and hopeful, we invested in a two-hundred-dollar tank with a filter and LED. We even bought a school of assorted guppies to keep our Son company. We watched him become a sort of despot in his blue kingdom, nipping on the guppies’ tails like a bored schoolboy tearing off butterflies’ fluttered wings. Tim fed him on impulse, always too little and too much, and I didn’t know how to correct the in-between. I would have never truly known Tim without Son, close as we were, inescapable the moment he laid eyes on me and rubbed my hand under the coffee table. The moment I tipped the Ziploc bag over to release the goldfish, who one day suddenly dropped dead with his bloated stomach above water. Glutted to death, our little despot. I kept the light on without Son and, for a while, believed that one day Tim would come back with another goldfish. But he never did.
for Me
My mother used to rip clocks off the wall. A goop of red paint collapsed in her arms like the Pietà. Dalí. She once told me it was bad luck to give clocks while we put one in a ribboned box. Mama. Stop. It’s bad luck. I said. But my jaw locked and I woke up with an urge to cry.
for Tim
I felt him. He wasn’t attractive, but I could learn. He told me to move, showing me how. I gripped the green jade on his collar bone with my teeth. His mother brought it back from Nepal. My tongue was burning, the jade—cold and smooth. Hung by a red string, out of space. It longed to go back to a sea of clouds rising on the mountain.
for Our Son
I go swimming at noon when the water is lukewarm and the others have gone for lunch, aiming for one long, streamlined glide that pushes my body into deep water. Left stroke, right stroke, rotate, come back, breathe. Enter—catch—pull. Exit. Recover. Repeat. I know there is a heart, because I can hear it beating. The boy working at the bar counts my laps. He is lean and toned underneath his cargo shorts, but he doesn’t swim. He makes ruby smooth Negroni and gets fresh towels. My arms move under water, for the ripples but not the spill. Eyes to the bottom of the pool, emptied out at noon. Slow and calm. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.
