by Laura Raye May
We won a goldfish at the county fair,
miserable little thing; it was dead
before we made it home, belly-up
in irreverent, bloated plastic,
taken, I thought, by my hands.
My sister wept for days.
We begged for new fish, threw
tantrums—my sister in shambles
with need. We were children.
Mother insisted we’d outgrow
it quickly; thou shall not waste.
My sister wept for weeks.
I stretched out, lost my love
for fins, but sister stayed small,
quiet in my adolescent shadow.
No one noticed her fingers
webbing. No one saw her gills.
My sister wept in secret.
We found her metamorphosis
too late: her skin in scales,
blue lips yawning, the fish
she always wanted: my sister,
cold and silver, flopping
on the bathroom floor.
Laura Raye May is a current graduate student of poetry at Auburn University in Alabama, where she also received her bachelor’s degree in the same subject. Raye has had poetry published in Auburn’s undergraduate literary magazine, The Auburn Circle, and was named an honorable mention for her poem “The Daughters of Le Vallée des Singes” by AWP in 2015. Additionally, her work has previously been accepted into Auburn University’s Research Week exhibit as an example of Creative Scholarship.