Somethin' Fishy

I am having a memory...

Aidan and I had a pet fish. It was -- I can't remember - one of those kinds that attacks and eats other fish so you have to put alone in their own tank. It was vicious, but beautiful. It looked like a liquid rainbow. We named it something funny. What was it? Why can't I remember? Butch, maybe. Something tough, like you might name a bulldog. Anyway, we stuck it in a vase with a water lily or peace lily or something like that...some sort of plant that survives well with its roots growing strictly in water. All these details I can hardly recollect, but I can see that vase and that fish sitting in our living room on the coffee table clear as a bell.

I will also never forget coming home, going to feed the fish and not being able to find the fish in the vase. It boggled me because where exactly could the fish have gone? I mean, how far could it possibly get? I looked and puzzled and looked and then - ohgod - I saw it. It was dead...squished at the bottom of the river rocks that we were told should sit at the bottom of the fish bowl. I sorta recoiled in horror when I saw it. Then I sat on the couch and furrowed my brow. How did our fish end up at the BOTTOM of the rocks? Did it wiggle its body through all the crevices down to the bottom? Was it looking for food? Was it insane? Or was it so miserable, trapped in this little glass vase and fated to be a house decoration, that it simply took its own life? Did our little fish self-destruct?

Not sure why I am thinking about that fish tonight. I have never figured out how it occurred - the fish's death. I suppose I never will...

But I can't help but wonder If when I walked away from Aidan, I was walking away from the best man that ever happened to me. I wonder if I then fell in love with a glass jar full of rocks.

Tonight I can't help but wonder If I am the fish.