There were seven fish swimming in the toilet bowl. I said GO AWAY FISH and the fish went away. The next day they were back and I said GO AWAY FISH and they did not go away, and so I tried FISH GO AWAY and after that there were maybe eight of them, so I stopped trying and let them be.
They were goldfish, mostly. One had spots. One was maybe a clownfish. I don’t care about fish, it might have been anything else.
I was fighting with my girlfriend at the time. That day she had broken my last soup bowl. The air was still jagged, though she had gotten on the bus hours ago to her night shift at Walgreens. I sat on the edge of the tub and stared into the toilet. I THINK I SHOULD BREAK UP WITH SHARON, I said, and then there were only five fish. I said, BUT MAYBE NO ONE WILL EVER LOVE ME AGAIN, and then there were 43 fish and I wasn’t sure if that was a yes or a no.
I normally eat ramen noodles but my soup bowls were broken, so I ordered a pizza and knocked back a cold one. Then I knocked back a few more cold ones, and then went down to the gas station and picked up more cold ones that were actually lukewarm ones because the freezer there sucks, but I don’t mind the warm beer, it feels like a punishment and some days the world feels like it needs to punish you for something. The sky on the way back was getting soft and crumbly around the edges like moss. I thought about the fish in my dark, dark toilet. I wished Sharon were there to see.
This piece was originally published in NANO Fiction and has been reprinted here with permission of the author.
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