Save The Fish

I was looking at my fish this morning - if you've never done this, you need to try it, because there is something so incredibly soothing about watching fish bob around in their watery world, with their plants, and their rainbow gravel, and their lights that glint off those silvery scales - because it's what I do when I need a moment to think. I actually needed about three hours, or maybe even seven weeks, to think, but I gave myself a moment in between the necessary studying and eating and assembling clothes on my poor neglected body.

I noticed one of my fish flip onto his side (they're all male, since they haven't made little fishy babies in the four months I've had them, and I like the idea of boy fishes better) and start "gasping" for oxygen molecules. I panicked a little, as anyone with an emotional attachment to her fish would, and then he just...stayed there, gasping; and he looked, I guess, sick - except he's a fish, and how does a fish possibly look sick? He's missing patches of his scales, and he's a lot thinner and smaller than the rest, and his fins look ragged. Oh, and by the way, this fish? This is Nameless, the one Art (didn't) name. Art's fish is dying, maybe, probably, and I'm utterly helpless to do anything.

Just like how I can't do anything to save the closest friendship I've ever had, that has wasted away into a mere aquaintance. Just like how I cannot stand to be anywhere around it, because who could? Who could confront the loss of something so precious? It's inevitable that his fish would be my favorite fish, and if he dies....