Goldfish and Naivete

She held it between her hands, that greasy weight like the sloppy orange children’s toy it was, the kind six year olds throw at the walls to watch stick hairily until it peels away and flops, dead, to the ground. This weight danced and twirled, gasping, and she just stared down and down into the depths of its flat black eyes as it mouthed and fumbled weakly beneath her. The cords in the fins trembled, fiber optic. Her eyes questioned the matte, frayed webs stretched between the cords. So this should become death – but her eyes were still baby’s blue, and mother still hasty to urge her hands back to the opening in the tank.
The water was cool against the shiny calluses not yet worn in the creases of her fingers, cooler than the swipe of dessicated fins as they whiskered away into the hum of the filter and the safety between leaves of plastic plants. The prided full skirt twirled as she turned away, her wet fingers clutching at the fabric, oblivious.
Today, older, she scoops it up again, examining the sickly shining orange, running her fingers, callused and hasty, over its sticky side. The fins clump together like wet hair not yet rinsed of the new grown-up conditioner, a mass of muddy orange. The flat eyes are shallow and whitely clouded, the raw black circles staring blankly and blankly into her own bruise blue eyes. Hastily, hastily, the weight plops sickeningly back into the choked hum of the filter, shaken off with oily beads of water from her hands in the sharp snap of dismissal. Her callused fingers smooth the straight navy skirt as she turns away, oblivious.