On Fish and the Sonnet You Wrote Me Last Year & An Unborn Child
by Savannah Stutevoss
University of the Incarnate Word
Savannah Stutevoss is a senior at the University of the Incarnate Word majoring in English. She is set to graduate May 2023 and hopes to attend law school in the fall. Writing has always been one of her hobbies, and she is excited to submit to Quirk after working the 2022 edition.
on fish and the sonnet you wrote me last year
when i was little i had a fish tank
it would sit above the piano and every day i would practice my little songs and stare at the fish
two angelfish i had named Daniel and Zebra
they listened to the waltz of the flowers from the nutcracker
or chopsticks and a two-octave scale in D
they listened to me play
i imagined that their swimming patterns went with my softly played notes
eventually
Daniel died and he floated to the top of the tank
i played better after that
i played better for Zebra who mourned the loss of his friend
and then years passed like the trickle of the water filter
Zebra died and he floated too
i got a new piano
one with actual hammers that struck the strings like a hard 2 am rain on a tin roof
and i still played for them
even though the opening in the wall where their tank was had been filled up
white and contrasting and despondent
i was no longer interested in fish
as much
i’d see them in the notes of an overture or a three-part symphony
eventually
life came and i floated not to the top but to the bottom
and the piano became a memory
my mother would still dust it every day
hoping to resurrect the sounds that it had once sung before
but i was simply too busy too tired too free too gone
and one day i met you and you sat down at the piano of your heart and you played it over and over and your melody got stuck in my head and in my soul
and i remembered how i’d play for the fish
so when you brought music into my life
i was a fish out of water, gills out and red and shiny
the pet store met me again with its glass displays
i bought some fish and i got some water and i set them where i could see them
and when i played your songs for them
music became part of my heart once again.
an unborn child
the boy is alive for now, inside of me
surrounded by fluids and entirely unknowing
he exists in space and time. many would argue
that he does not exist at all. but my blood flows
through him and so do my nutrients and energy
and entire life plans and ambitions, sifting through
his partially undeveloped quasi hands and tadpole body.
i see my stomach growing larger and my future spiraling smaller,
a broken unfocused camera lens,
as he continues to swell my panic and anger and opportunity.
we made love together day after day
and i told him he smelled of tomatoes.
but we were a beautiful mix of flavors and colors.
a salad you pay fifteen dollars for at the breakfast spot downtown,
the ironic kind with enough calories in the dressing to offset it being a salad.
but he tasted so good i couldn’t pull away.
i am best friends with whatever is inside me,
its delicate miniscule parts the size of a seed
that will never grow into a towering tree. or a geometrically carved flower.
the seed grows faster than i can bear and
shoots pain in my sides and hatred in my head and longing in my heart.
the blood in the toilet
is the unripe squashed tomato that i so clearly smelled before.
nothing matters now except the body that will never be
with tiny frog-like arms and legs. a mere possibility
of ceased existence never moving forward or backward again.
the pills in my stomach taking my creation
into the watery furrows and spineless rushing of the white satin bowl.