Fish

There were seven fish swimming in the toilet bowl. I said GO AWAY FISH and the fish went away. The next day they were back and I said GO AWAY FISH and they did not go away so I tried FISH GO AWAY and after that there were maybe eight of them so I stopped trying and let them be.
They were goldfish mostly. One had spots. One was maybe a clownfish. I don’t care about fish. It might have been anything else.
I was fighting with my girlfriend at the time. That day she had broken my last soup bowl. I sat on the edge of the tub and stared into the toilet. I THINK I SHOULD BREAK UP WITH SHARON, I said, and then there were only five fish. I said, BUT MAYBE NO ONE WILL EVER LOVE ME AGAIN, and then there were 43 fish and I wasn’t sure if that was a yes or a no.
I normally eat ramen noodles but my soup bowls were broken so I ordered a pizza and knocked back a cold one. Then I knocked back a few more cold ones and went down to the gas station to pick up more cold ones that were actually lukewarm ones because the freezer there sucks. I didn’t mind the warm beer though. It felt like a punishment and some days the world feels like it needs to punish you for something. The sky on the way back was getting soft and crumbly around the edges like moss. I thought about the fish in my toilet. I wished Sharon were there to see.

Kendra Fortmeyer is associate fiction editor of the Bat City Review, and an MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work is forthcoming in Broad! magazine.