When people hold a fish by the tail, and they watch it gasp and flail
I wonder if they feel the same pain in the chest that I do
Or if they feel that something inhuman is just not of the same worth
If this was as inevitable as the night who lies himself across the face of the earth

I see the blue swirls of the sky, the warmth playing in the breeze
All the rusty yellow vans, the water’s sleeping shipwrecks
The incomprehensible love in my dad’s eyes, the shop’s blue and white stripes
A swing set on the grass back home, a little dolphin around my neck

I saw something very beautiful, but it was small and fleeting
Like a baby bird’s life
Tumultuous and multicoloured as it descended from the trees above
Feathers cascading like confetti, my small tornado of love

You have to get high enough to feel its quivering wings
Be indifferent to your thoughts so you can hear it try to sing
Hold out your hands as you watch it misstep upon the twigs
To catch something dying, you first must believe it can live

You should know I hold a net when I meander through night
To raise it against the wind, hoping to catch all the tiny fish
The ones you couldn’t imagine alive, the ones you let free from your mind
I feel their scales on my skin, the blow of their breathless kiss

I laid down beneath the sun and saw them dart between the trees
They painted me a picture of life with fins of mint and tangerine
Why don’t you paint me; just paint me- I’m a fish being lifted into the mist
Held by a hook in the heart, my body eternally adrift