driftbody at the koi pond
by Annmarie Delfino
The fish enunciate a dumb uhh, no speech I can distinguish. When they reach
the surface their bubbles of air, when they enter the air, become nothing –
which is to say, indistinguishable from the rest
of itself. Their mouths hinge open as slowly
as the coin purse I unearthed in my mother’s jewelry box, its neat clasp
two shiny, puckered lips. It fit my palms perfectly – the pleated folds
that skimmed its sides matched up exactly
with the creases of my cupped hands. When I pried it
open, its insides glinted like silk in the light – loose, wine-red, slippery
as a kidney – and I never believed, though I’d seen only fabric
a moment before, that, when closed, its little chamber
didn’t hold coins, just as I never believed my mother
when she denied the koi had swallowed some, brined
some children’s wishes in their bellies. Before the pain
of the stones passing, she would say some days
her kidneys hurt, unable to believe I couldn’t feel mine, nor even point
to where they were supposed to be. Was I young so long as I held this
inner Nothing intact? I must have filled this in, too –
my mother as a child, prying the same pouch open
until it yawned its then-contents into her palm – the choice to leave it empty
not for lunch money or cigarettes or to blend
into the faux velvet of a theater seat
as the lights went down, waiting with bated breath
for the moment Robert Redford pinwheeled his silk shirts into Mia
Farrow’s pale arms, but to feel then, as I did, when
the purse’s sleek-dark interior gleamed at me with the sheen
of a red fin, when the koi’s maroon scales dimmed
as they mottled with the pond’s depth, something as yet
undetectable stir in response.