Her eye is wet
Seeking a dark place to
Sleep, seeing great blue and white and blue and white and
You snap your pliers and
Wrench the hook from her,
Pulling slime and blood and meat and gills and
You place her on the stump, crusted with
Scales from things past and the cracks in the
Dry wood, where spiders sleep,
Cradle flecks of ancient blood and
You grope at the rocks, smoothed by
Years of lapping waves and lift it and
Meet her head, and
Crush it, her tail flaps for just a beat, a thump but
Her eye, surface tension
Breaks and red floods like
Egg yolk and
You pull the knife from its
Plastic sheath and it shines,
Wavering in the light, green water shining and
Blade, flexing, begging to rip and
One hands holds her against the stump,
Splinters of flaking wood driving past her gills and
You drag the blade against her, carving
Scales sent flying into the still air and still,
Some stick to the blade and more still
Fall into that ancient place, dark and wet and
Rotten and
You hold her still, her meat still buzzing,
And poke the knife’s tip just in front of her
Vent and drag it forward, gliding with no
Resistance, to the gills, still ripe and red and
Ready to breathe and
You unfold her,
Like a book or like a
Well loved friend, to reveal her
Clockwork self not meant to be seen,
Her meals, crayfish and worms and insects and
A piece of scented dough which brought her here, all
Melting inside her and
You drag your finger along the inside of her,
Peeling the meat from her and
Flicking the slime from from your fingertips,
Left by still shining organs you could never know the function of but
You could venture a guess.
— Jay Scully is a writer from Virginia who currently attends the University of Mary Washington.