Purity's Fish

Young Purity rode in her old car. She did it to be free, she did it to roll down the windows and feel the wind in her hair. Purity had a home, yes – but it was not a place she belonged. Purity rode not for scenery, or for a specific purpose, or to meet anyone special. Purity soaked in the dirtiness of her little city, relishing the loud noises of the people on the street and the sharp smell of fish being packed in the bay. Purity loved the ugly, she worshipped the flawed, and admired the broken.

As she made a turn near the Gloucester harbor, she saw a large ship docked on the side of a pier. A steady stream of yellow fishermen emerged from the deck. A few were carrying a large marlin fish, and it was bleeding profusely all over their raincoats. Purity saw the blood that left a trail from its net on the boat, the mark of the fish’s death journey, the point at which it met its demise looking into the eyes of a man swinging a club. “It is strange,” thought Purity, “That the fish bleeds back into the ocean in the way it does. The blood is in the ocean, the fish swim in the blood, and they do not even realize it.”

Tiny orange swirls of blood mixed with the blue-green tide of the ocean, aided by the ebbing of the waves. Purity could imagine how the fish had fought, how it had swung it’s tail and tried to swim away, only to realize that there was no water anymore. She wondered whether the fish had ever really even realized that a world existed outside of its ocean existence, until the direct moment of it’s death.

Purity had to look away; she had to turn her car once more. As she rode down the straight line of the boulevard, she wanted to talk to that fish. Purity regretted not trying to find its eyes, to find the answer there. “What did the fish think of my city?” she thought, “Did he see it as beautifully flawed? Or horribly twisted? Does the fish see innocence in the ocean? Or does he see light in the humans walking?”

Purity thought of all this on her way to her house, when she realized it was time that she went home.