It wasn’t how fresh my fingers were after the gutting that made me sick.
We were 10 when she and I picked our way down to the river—a half-manmade affair rerouted from its natural path by concrete. In the rainy seasons, it flooded in defiance.
And strangely enough, things lived there even when the water was dirty and shallow. We scooped the small fish into plastic cups and took them home. Out of the sunlight, their bellies no longer shone silver. Out of the water, they could no longer breathe.
We stripped them, gills first, tails second, bodies last, while the oxygen suffocated them. Children can be so innocently, powerfully cruel. Later, when I asked my mother if fish felt pain, she said yes.
Art of cross-section through shark gills via Corbis
2 comments:
From pain, beauty.
"Real" or otherwise, this story is evocative and universal. It is poetry, created from precise words set perfectly, like so many tiny jewels, in a small space..
thank you.
love how you used fff trigger to create something unexpectedly gruesomely beautiful. walk good.
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