Things Growing; At the Smallest Pond in Wyoming

 

my mother sets the line, helps cast the pole
holds my hands, and steps back
my pudgy fingers tumble in little circles
dragging a fragile scaly thing to air
 
it looks at me, dangling stupid
I toss it in the bucket with glee
my mother watches full of pride and understanding
that I am growing
 
my cousins watch with mounting humor
as I catch another and another
more than anyone ever caught
at the smallest pond in Wyoming
 
as the sun comes close to setting
Frank and Thad throw their catches
but I am too in love with my bucket of prey
and my mother says to eat them
 
I hook my drowning dangling onto chains
and drag them down the road
then lying on grass I finely see them
and so refuse to kill them
 
I laugh instead and watch them still
flap in dirt and grass, gills puckering
eyes drying, lips distended in rictus grins
all of them dying comedic geniuses
 
my mother says no turning back
no round to buckets or to ponds
cruel to let them live, cruel to stand and watch
but she couldn’t make me gut them
 
you can’t make me! I cry, now leader of the scaly resistance
liberator of the already drowning by my hands
so Frank & Thad laugh too, and call me King of Prey
they hold me down and make me watch and I just laugh some more
 
she sighs and she kneels
eyes with mine, shoulders forward
the giantess watches with shame and understanding
that I am young and laughing
 
She takes up the stone
and bludgeons the fish
then takes the knife
and rips them too
 
I try to stay laughing
but soon sit
no hands hold me down
just watch blood and death
 
as mothers scarred hands
reach in and tear out
again and again
what once was life
 
by the end no one can laugh
by the end no one is hungry
we put the fish in the freezer
where it stayed, until my grandmother died
and we had to clean out her fridge