since I only ever saw fish being sold

on planks covered with tarp or on ice beds in fancy stores,

I only found sorrow in the purchase of their deaths.

how we use one life to sustain another,

breeding and farming existences only for slaughter.

I go back to one memory, one that I observe in every light:

a glass tank on a slab of dark marble,

half full of salty water and crowded with salmon,

and the rising panic as they darted in their prison

as one man scooped out one mug full of water after another

and drained it on the sidewalk.

something so profoundly helpless and sadistic in that action:

the life force of a being discarded like garbage

right in front of their eyes.

their kin, laid out right beside them,

tarp on plank on bricks and stones,

slits in their flesh to increase the appeal

of what their bodies had to offer.

how much like life was that one memory –

moment after precious moment

taken away by people, disposed of by time,

until we lie, facing up, eyes swimming in their sockets

as our last breath leaves our corpse.