Grandmother, this fish tattoo is the only thing keeping me alive
by Jennifer Hanks
on days when I want to hurt my wrist but not these danios, blue specks of a past when
I
slept with a man, kept a tank with withering plants and these reasonable schools always
circling. The cherry shrimp molting, dying, I was always traveling to Chinatown for
crystal
invertebrates. Grandmother, I am a slut but you know that, prescient as your ghost is with its
bird-claws dug into my shoulders. A slut who can鈥檛 take off their clothes in the best
of
situations. I remember how magnetic you were in pictures鈥揾ow even in black and white
I
could tell your lipstick was the crimson you can crush a man under, leave his collar
dirty,
leave a temporary fossil record. You lost that love for your body, but I never had
it to begin
with. If I could mourn myself. If I could mourn myself the way I mourned the tetra
whose
belly ruptured before my eyes, maybe I could cut into myself like a block of cheese (I don鈥檛
interest myself the way gouda interests me, the way I want women to feel things about
their
bodies I can鈥檛 feel about my own). You, grandmother, would understand not dying is
an
active state, where I vibrate with world-bits in my legs and chest and wrists. Crystal
shrimp.
Pulling J鈥檚 hair. Shredded potatoes I pick off my shirt and eat.