10/19/09 Patricia A. Hawkenson’s Reflections – Slippery Fish
Slippery Fish
My eyelids instinctively squinted
and I had to turn my head
away from him
as if the saltiness
of the sardines
he was eating
could find a way
to sting my eyes.
He just laughed
as he dangled
the slippery fish
in front of my pinched nose
before opening his mouth,
dropping it in
and moaning
with an ecstasy
that a child
shouldn’t know.
Perhaps his intention
was a father’s expectation
that I would grow
tough enough
to cope with anything
and anybody.
If I had been a smarter child
I would have run
from his haunting laughter
that slithered its way
into my dreams.
But my tears were preserved
like salty brine,
and forty years later
as they begin to fall,
I smell the fish
and hear the cutting metal
of his opening can.
