Poetry Prose Fiction SciFi Fantasy Short Story
Los Angeles - New York - Writer

A young pretty with many miseries of her own sat in a dinghy adrift. She cast nets and lines with little sweet words like "husband" and "love" as bait. The wind off ripple waves blew her hair in coy girl swirls about her face in halo. To see her, one might have thought ‘Paravati adrift’ or ‘Kali fishing’. Below the surface, a deep blue catfish watched her reflection sun dance. He peeked through a wave and said, "Hello."

"Hello," she said back.

"You’re beautiful," the catfish stated, matter of factly before the pretty’s eyes could roll up white. "But you know that." She took a veiled if more serious interest in the fish, accepted his compliment.

"Thank you."

"You’re welcome," the catfish said and ducked beneath the wave.

When he returned, the pretty asked, "Where did you go?"

"Down for air. I suffocate if I stay up here too long. I don’t mind. The short of breath is worth the time speaking with you."

"Is it?" the pretty asked.

"Mm hmm," the catfish assured her, turning a deeper shade of blue.

"Mm." A pause passed between them. The catfish seemed to have a question.

"Yes?" the pretty asked.

"Well, y’see. I’m a catfish with a poet’s taste for words, and "husband" and "love" thrill like the sound of fast water running, but the hook doesn’t and I was just wondering if you could toss one of those words free.

"If you eat all my words free, what will I eat?"

"A poem."

"A poem?"

"Mm hmm," the catfish said, and spoke ad infin. "In the face of the moon, there waits a child silently crying no tears for love’s return. The child waits for you." Ad infin.

"Mm. My sister’s a poet."

"Oh," the catfish said, and offered up a finful of "Seaweed?"

"No thank you," the pretty declined, and added, "Tell me something about you."

"Well, I’m content alone."

"But not so content as to find your own words."

"Well I could and I have, but this is more fun. And now, it’s your turn to tell me something about you."

The pretty grimaced. She preferred fish who were dumb, and didn’t ask too many questions. But the day was slow. So she looked at her ring fingertip and explained, "I burnt my finger on a red coil once. I did it deliberately. It hurt. I won’t do it again. But I did it." She gave her finger a perplexed look and then a stern look to the fish. He floated belly up and enjoyed the snowflake pattern of fear her memory shared, frozen in his mind’s eye. He liked strangeness.

When the snowflake melted, he asked, "So. How about one of those words?"

"How about it?" the pretty retorted and gave the line a jerk.

"Ooh, you’re good," the catfish replied and swam down to the husband word. It hung on its hook like a button on a string. Its edge began to ripple with a rainbow glow: An aura, hers from her touch, the catfish thought as he watched with delighted horror as the aura swam out and around and swum a picture hallucination of a wedding ceremony...

Two lovers sat naked on an Indian blanket in a wilderness private. Their friends gathered silently around in circle. The two cut their palms with a razor stone and bound their bleeding hands together with a braid of rope made from their once long hair. His best woman and her best man lifted self made irons of love from the burning coals nearby and branded the two on the chest left of sternum. Their knuckles turned white. Their neck tendons webbed. Their teeth clenched tight. Their nostrils flared, breathing in the black twist hairs of their burning flesh stench. They remained silent. This they asked to be done to them as they believed what the poet said, "Make the wedding ritual impossible to forget." When the irons were removed, all eyes looked to the wounds to see the design the lovers had made of themselves. An archangel alighted in a field of heather blossom. In the palms of the angel there flew two butterflies, one black, one white. Above and below the scene, the eye of creation teared a bead of sorrow’s release that traveled down around and bound the scene in a circle of life and death’s continuum. When they could, the lovers sat up and pressed snow, soothe into each other’s wounds and spoke a chorus into each other’s ear.

"Now we two are wed with these burns in the flesh. Let it be known I live for myself first, last and always. What kindness I have to give, I give to you, as you are now burned into my life.

Now we two are wed with these burns in the flesh. Let it be known if ever we part, our flesh will prove who first we gave our hearts to.

Now we two are wed, with these burns in the flesh. You may call me husband. You may call me wife."

The two embraced and kissed the lover’s kiss, deep as the ocean’s dream. Their friends lifted the blanket and carried them home in a hammock, singing a mantra "Witcha tai tai keemerai owanicka owanicka hey ney hey ney owah." The voices of the mantra echoed out over the high desert snow into silence. The after wedding feast lasted days and years until their wind graves.

The hallucination ended. The catfish swam to the surface with tremendous fear and hope and asked, "If I eat your word, will you marry me?" The pretty pulled back in her posture, surprised to be asked to marry a fish.

"I don’t know. Let me think." She withdrew into herself for thought while the catfish swam patient circles around the boat, thinking things like, "Rebellion against fear gives the soul integrity." The pretty’s fingers insect stitched a pillow dream sat in her lap. Busy hands helped her thoughts. She heard her father speak unconditional love. She heard her mother scream, "Slut!" She remembered her vows to her sisters to forever hold "He" evil in her heart. She remembered her first lover, tenderness gone, the bridle and the gag, the lie and the disease...

When the moon, her goddess, rose and cast her in a pale blue hue, she looked for the child of his poem, and saw her answer. "Yes," she said.

"Thank you," the catfish said, and leapt over the boat’s bow and slipped through the pupil of the moon’s reflection and swam quick down and ate the husband word. She reeled him in and ate sushi.

In the morning, after washing her hands of his blood and scales, she fingered his marriage wish bone and thought, "Before you, the child never cried." She kissed the bone and tossed it under a wave and sailed into her life alone. Eventually, the wind married them as dust. And it is rumoured in the afterlife that they were great friends. But that is only a rumour.