Stasis

When I was six both my goldfish
murdered each other without, in
my eyes, so much as a
provocation, though that
would be how it would look from someone
outside that glass globe of theirs,
wouldn't it?

Aqueous membrane under
a plasterwhite sky
rippling
with the placid calmness
of a dying breath
fogging up
the sides of the world
on which dance shadows
of your own reflection
before you, and behind you
your twin brother
and his molecules of scent
trickling through your gills
A flicker, a slight distortion
on one's path, the sole one
whose image can give way
beneath my beak
unlike the glass, the rocks
or the plastic Ionian column,
backdrops to a Greek tragedy.

I think about that now, how I
was sad when they died
the one by the other and the
murder from his wounds,
even though I never could tell them apart.
I feel I learned a great lesson
about human cruelty
looking at myself looking at the fish.