could I divulge it? I wouldn’t cringe between the hair-triggers
       and eyes charcoaled with grief. Did I do that to you? I snap hard

against our frame. A goldfish may leap out of its tank, suffocate.
       A betta may just bludgeon itself to death. When you go, you have

two choices: one is lonely, the other is angry. To tell you the truth,
       I never understood it—the fish I’ve had were less dramatic:

A hovering orange blimp one morning, or a stranger-danger lesson
       with a slow bacterial decent. It turns out I’m ill-equipped to burn

a house down. For starters, my hands won’t unclinch, I have eight
       blood moons rising, my jaw hung open for days like a clamshell

and the fruit’s dodgy. You look at me and I know: you no longer smell
       anything sweet. I wonder if pheromones are like oil lamps,

if you can reach the end of your wick and Lights out, Baby!
       If that explains this smolder, or that my left elbow has been bent

out of shape without the log of your body to contain it. At night
       I beat at impossible shapes: a cookie cutter star, a cartoon frog—