The plastic lid on the fish tank locked you inside with Death-
A cold, liquid murderer.
You breathed in His saliva through your gills.
It gummed your mouth and jaundiced your eyes.
I watched you suffer through quarter inch glass,
While you, an inmate, wished to die
From poison oxygen on our cherry floor.
I rested a shoe on top of the aquarium lid
To prevent your suicide while we slept.

I dreamt that night of you
dragging me to the bottom of your cell
With your chapped fins and rotting
sucker mouth grasping my shoulder,
Gasping for clean water.
You forced me to inhale
Death's unforgettable stench
As we did you.

You were dead the next morning,
And I never got to tell you sorry.
Instead I shoveled your carcass
Out from the blue gravel
Coated in your corpse.