“beyond the blue”

on my way to the grocery, I find myself drawn inexplicably to the pet store next door, the silent siren calls of all those animals for sale behind partitions of glass smudged from pressed noses–within and without. i had no reason to go, i told myself no desire to break my vow of never again, and yet i entered with visions of plastic-bagged bubble-eyed goldfish peering at the world outside, wondering what they’d see within their clear prison, how warped the world would seem, how distorted by the bend of wet bag, how magnified by the curving light. 

drawn to the first tanks down the first aisle, i am witness to the existence of piscine prisoners within tanks of painted blue backdrops, sparsely planted and falsely cheerful plants that will never grow, that have never grown, and the harsh glare of artificial light. Could these tiny occupants see outside their small domain, or did they gawk at each glass wall, mocked by their own reflections? I suspect a bit of both, as tanks of shared walls host gangs of aquatic life: guppies gazing enraptured to the right, gangly goldfish staring back to the left at that same shared partition. Did they dream of freedom, each other, or nothing at all but the

                             shattering of their own 

                   faces, blossoming open    into 

                       an ocean of    

                                true  blue…?

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*inspired by a recent trip to a petstore.