|
Beth Sherman
My Father Was a Cuttlefish
Always changing shape and shade. When my mother called his name, he turned grey as gravel, or neon green as the plastic sea grass she’d purchased to jazz up the tank, his jaws mimicking the orange and white stripes of the clown fish he hid behind when dinnertime rolled around. He had three hearts: one reserved for us, one for the male tetras he met behind the fake deep-sea diver, flicking gill to furtive gill, the roughness of scales, shame mingled with delight. And one heart just for himself, secret and unknowable, a mystery he kept stashed beneath jagged purple barnacles.
Weekends, he’d take me for a swim and hold me in his tentacles, as if he thought I might drown. He taught me how to see things I might otherwise miss: the greedy, puckered mouths of catfish, which hands sprinkled flakes and which would scoop us into a net, how to look beyond the bowl to an unseen ocean.
He could swivel his eyes to view what was behind him but not into a future where my mother grew to hate his disguises, to blame herself and then him for the blank space that was their marriage. He was not a fish at all. That, my mother screamed, breaking leaf hammocks, breaking promises, was the problem. He quick-tailed away. Hunching near the filter, squid-like, until one day he leaped over the smudged glass and plunged to the carpet below.
Our bowl grew cloudy with grief. Bacteria bloomed. Hairy threads of algae sprouted everywhere. Coral turned muddy brown. Starved of air, I couldn’t stop gasping, emitting a string of useless bubbles into the murky water. Though he wasn’t good at cuddling, I knew he adored me.
When threatened, he released a cloud of sepia ink that confused predators and allowed him to escape. The ink was good for writing, too. After he died, I found dozens of journals outlining his frustrations, the choices he’d cast off, how sometimes he wished he could be a goldfish instead, content to amuse and delight, a welcome prize at the fair.
Beth Sherman’s writing has been published in more than 100 literary magazines, including Portland Review, Tiny Molecules, 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream and Bending Genres. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024. She’s also a Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and multiple Best of the Net nominee. bethsherman.site
|
