I saw death for the first time when I was 8.
She was beautiful and isolated, floating upside down in a fish tank at a Chinese restaurant.
I remember her red eyes, so hollow and glassy staring at me as I pressed my nose against the glass. A blue light illuminated her in the tank, as my clenched fist relentlessly tapped the glass to make her move. I remember the dim lighting and the smell of soy sauce that filled the entire room. I remember being so captivated by the abnormal stillness that death had, the way she quietly occupied a corner and laid there drawing my eyes away from the bubbles, the current, the life.
I remember my brother dropping his toy soldier into the tank and the way it sank slowly to the bottom, nudging death upwards before I screamed.
I felt my father’s hand wrap around my waist as he bent down to lift me up and place my head on his shoulder. I clung to the lapels of his coat, shielding my eyes as he said, “Bub, the fishy is just sick. They’ll take him to the vet tomorrow and fix him right up!”
Even then, I knew he was lying. He was lying to protect me.
“Goldfish have only 7 seconds of memory, Ty,” said my brother as we watched the men fish out his toy.
“Then the fishy is lucky that he saw my beautiful girl, Josh,” said Dad as I hung onto him tightly.
It was later, when we were walking back to the car and the sky was covered with pin-prick stars just waiting to burst into silver dust that would rain over our heads that Maa leaned in to grasp my hand, pulling me behind as Dad led ahead with Josh into the darkness.
“You know what Daddy does, don’t you?”
“He plays war, Maa!” I said rolling my eyes. “He’s like Josh’s soldiers. He fights. The safety of our nation and its citizens is his life.” I felt her shiver beside me before she continued.
“The emphasis stays on life, Ty.”
“What’s emphasis?”
“The point, the focus,” she explained as she leaned in to tuck my hair behind my ears.
“Well, duh! What else is there?”
She sighed softly into the cold night as we finally moved forward.
I’m 16, and I see death for the second time.
She has grown, floating gracefully between caskets of marred faces. I see her eyes, her irises are inked in and they look at me so delicately, with such hollowed sorrow. Her shape is traced by the rain that crashes from above. My fists are clenched and rest by my side as I resist the urge of grabbing her shoulders and shaking them till her seams are pulled apart one stitch at a time. I resist the urge of lighting myself on fire as it rains gasoline.
I can barely see, and the smell of mud pies and damp grass fills my body. I am captivated by her wispiness, the way she floats in and out of my clouded vision. I can feel my brother grip my hand as I fold into his hold. I watch as they lower his casket into the ground, the damp flag that clings to the wood before I scream.
No one bends to pick me up. I can’t cling to his coat anymore. The lies have bled through, and I didn’t even get to say goodbye.
I march straight into my bathroom after the funeral, the image of his crooked smile and his stars pointed upwards burned into my head. I slam the door and pull the latch up as I slip out of my dripping dress and into a tub filling up with warm water.
I can’t think with the haze in my head, in my eyes, and with my knees pulled up to my chest I can’t think about how I never got to sa–
We can’t just fish him out like a toy soldier, because the consequences of battles were real.
I screw my eyes shut, and I think about how there might be some things dying for, yet nothing worth killing for. I try pulling my focus to the tar that coats the inside of my lids. I watch as it drips through my empty insides to fill every pore, to suffocate me.
I scrub and I scrub and I scrub, but it won’t wash away.
I count my sins just as he makes his way up to his maker.
If character equates fate, then this had to have been a tragic miscommunication. Death had refused to separate the sinners and saints; the choice had been made, and I would pay for them with the time that remained.
If there is a God, I hope he is filled with shame.
A-L-I-V-E, please F-I-G-H-T. We’ll take you to the vet, Daddy. We’ll take you to the vet and they’ll fix you right up. We won’t let you leave this time. I’ll engineer the outcomes till you remember to place me before your nation and its citizens.
I’ll fall down on my knees. I’ll kneel and I’ll pray till God remembers who I am.
I bath in the clinical tube-light, in the tub overflowing with water. I feel the weight of nothing, of the peculiar universe settle around me. A universe with hundreds of stars in the dark sky, but no him. A universe where it would take me a thousand lifetimes to even begin forgetting him.
I whisper to no one in particular, “I’m afraid. I’m afraid of being as dense as a goldfish when the time has come.”
“I’ll make those last 7 seconds beautiful,” carries her waif whisper.
I reach for the pills, his label and my spit as I swallow a handful.
“Death, I’m not emphasising life anymore.”
“Death?”
“Take me to him?”
“ Dea-“
My tongue is swollen. My words are slurred. I am floating upside down in a fish tank with the white noise of banging fists on the door carrying me through.
Esha is a pajama-clad eighteen-year-old who loves Musicals, debating politics, and big words. She has vague aspirations, a best friend who lives in the North, and a familiarity with the outside of books.