I tried going to the aquarium to make it up to myself. But I just ended up there crying to get out, and thinking about how none of the living things there had a choice. I ended up drowning myself in the tank with all the pink ones, hoping they’d give me my color back and blend. But worst of all, I never even went. I couldn’t. I really wanted to but I just couldn’t. We were supposed to go after our dinner the night before Valentine’s Day, but we fought and fought and I think we would’ve gotten there and it would’ve been closed. I checked the times (you said you had checked the times). It closes at 4 pm on Tuesday. Dinner was at 4:15. We were fighting until 10:35. I did think that I could love you into being yourself or being here or being with me. I always knew but I really didn’t want to, so I just stopped knowing. I think that all the pink fish swam inside and entered me through my mouth, making me as large as the tank and stretching my skin thin against the glass like a shield, like a covering, like protection. For the fishes. Wait, but what did you see? If it was a different sort of image, or a dream, I can let myself be wrong. A second opinion doesn’t hurt. I know you’re not even seeing this, here, at the Camden Aquarium, but I know that you wish you were so I’d be willing to bend my reality a little. So you can feel INCLUDED. Nobody saw when they were walking by– it was like I was invisible. All you need is an alibi. Where were you at 10:35 pm, February 13th, when the Camden Aquarium fish tank exploded with pieces of a real girl’s FLESH? Could you identify this body? Do you even recognize her stuffed full of FISH who STRETCHED through her SKIN? They were only trying to help her get her aura back. They went in through her mouth like food, they went through her veins and inside every inch like YOU, they covered her in scales. Each prickly octagon INGRAINED IN THE SKIN, PINCHING SKIN, ELEVATED AN INCH ABOVE, had words. She ended up with writing all over her body. She left notes. All of these things she wanted to do, how she thought of you. If only you’d come by and read it all. She knew you’d like that, to be TALKED ABOUT. FOR HOURS. BY EVERYONE. For it to all be so ROMANTIC and TREACHEROUS. And about you! But you couldn’t make it. The aquarium closed, and you had do what was best for you.
Brittany Deitch is a Philadelphia college grad, music scene denier, and stream-of-consciousness writer. She currently writes for Paste Magazine, runs/edits Ratpie Friends, and has words in Rejections Letters, Maudlin House, and Bottlecap Press. She writes on Substack at https://theworstpersonintheworld.substack.com/
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