Fins and Feet
When I came up, up out of the water this second time, and lay among the reeds like any fish upon a hook, I did not expect to find you there. I expected nothing but the sharp pin-pricks of air pushing against my shin and the gasp of ice in my water-logged lungs. Why did you come? You should not have reached into the murk and pulled me out—I was fine down there, down with the silt and the hard-shelled crabs, just fine in my bed of mud. I saw that sun from down below like you can never see it, filtered through soft waves and piercing foam, but never penetrating into me. You took that away when you reached in and caught my drifting limbs. Oh, why could you not have let me be? Now here I am, back again, just where I don't want to be—next to you, dripping, choking, suffocated by this thing you tell me is love. Love would have let me lie on the dark bottom with the eels to kiss my sodden lips, soft fronds to hold me as you never did. You should have kept me when I first crawled out, stumbling, staggering to your door, expecting so much more than the cold look on your face at the dry, misshapen thing I was, for you. When shamed I turned away, you should not have followed, but you did and now you've pulled me out—for what? What did you expect from a fish? My fins will not turn back to feet for you.