Thanks for All the Fish

He Was Chaotic:

My teacher says of their cat, now gone

missing. In his absence, everything is still.

The small, silvered line

in a grief-filled night.

When my love arrived into my life

they brought noise. Their ideas

their laugh, their loud joy. They rumbled

thunder in the distance.

Then, the dog came too. Noise.

His fluffy-eared need to play.

Before, it had been so quiet. My minutes

looming to more minutes.

Time. Oh, time. They came

and the seconds collapsed.

Entire months, blurred. Love

a time machine. Love, a spaceship

mystery. On the morning I watch

dolphins play in pairs, my teacher

tells me about their cat. Oceans

in their eyes. The dolphins play

with each other. They flirt. One day

when my loves leave, be it by choice—

theirs, mine, or God’s, the sadness

that threatens to take. But oh

today, when the dolphins leave

our sight, the water is quiet.

Still, under the sun.

Fatimah Asghar.