I began from a cold, dark place.
With no eyes to see, no scale to feel,
No form to move, no voice to scream.
What a beginning to a story.

And then there was light, chasing away the black abyss.
And I saw five hundred more of my siblings.
And I basked myself in the glory of living.
And I saw something coming.

We ran in fear, each fish for themselves.
"What cruel world we live in!"
From the very start, I cry these words.
"That we must live in constant fear!"

Struggling and trembling I began to learn.
The untold ways of life.
One more day I live, picking food off the floor.
Not yet dead but barely living.

Until the day came, and I was stranded.
The water retreating,
As quickly as it delivered me.
Unto unknowable shores.

I lie there beneath the unforgiving sky,
Pondering what remained of my days.
All that I've familiarized with,
Has hid themselves away from my sight.

Foaming and dying here, a foreign land,
Not knowing any knowable thing yet.
Grieving and crying here, a waterless land,
Not having any limbs to walk with yet.