Momo

when I see the smudged bowl that Momo lived in, I think of his fins, which drifted off of his body and broke apart like popsicles, and my fingernails, which flake into pieces and snag on my sweater. it goes on, then, to scars on my face and side and especially one on my thigh, a casualty from fence-climbing into a covert Astroturf party in Riverside park. Momo was rushed to my uncle Bill’s aquarium hospital, a small tank that sits beside a large glowing one, where all the sick fish live. I swallow to think that he slipped into the sink, once, and I screamed OH MY GOD again again again until my father threw him back into the bowl with his white hands. my fish was buried in a backyard where a golden-retriever named George once lived. I think of Momo’s small fish bones, the ones that will stay behind once his scales and eyes disappear into the ground, and I think knobby knees, mine, the ones my cousins mocked six summers ago, and of lives so glossy, and of girls who make my stomach hurt, and of little blue fish, whose eyelash lips whisper kisses to no one