Fish Bowl

(For the prompt: Reality vs Doomscrolling)

***
Between calls and emails, she eyes the
fish in the bowl. One looks lethargic.
One seems smaller. She googles videos
of other fish. Panics. Posts questions
on a fish-mom group. After work, she
considers them again. Perhaps, it was
the other one. She still can’t tell them
apart. She hasn’t named them. They’re
FISH. She’s not sure if fish have ears.
She can’t remember if she fed them in
the morning. She drops more food.
Looks at the thermostat. Googles some
more. Do fish feel cold? Well, maybe
tomorrow she’ll go to the store. She
doesn’t like the man there, though. He
told her if one dies, she can just flush
it down the toilet. See, that’s why no
names. You don’t just pick Stripes or
Goldie and drop them in the WC. What
else, then? She searches online for fish
funerals but there is a report to finish.
Maybe fish are lazy. Shape- shifting.
Maybe that’s what they mean by calming.
She wonders why she got the fish. She
wonders if she should get three more.

The fish watches her, asleep, head on
her desk. The big creature who lived in
dry water. The fish wonders if the
creature is cold. It thinks again about
leaping over the rim to escape. It is
dark. The creature is snoring. The fish
wonders if the big creature has ears.

***

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#April2024 28/30