Betta Fish
My senior year of high school, I pulled a betta fish from a bag.
Licorice candy scales reflecting through the glass.
An exercise in incorporating an object into a speech:
just keep swimming. I tried to return the fish
to the teacher, but she told me it was mine.
On freedom's cusp, I did not want
even the weight of a small creature. Wanted only
to crack open my desire and thumb the holed
honeycomb of each dripping piece. I was afraid
I would kill the first thing that needed me (back).
I learned I had to dechlorinate the water.
He lived in a pitcher I dropped tablets in to suck out
the sick. Survived my college dorm, my first apartment.
Cupping him into little containers while I waited
for safety on the other side of the solvent. I watched
his mouth puckerkiss around food pellets as they sunk
to the bottom. Years later, a pregnancy test in my fist
I thought of this. Married, and too old to be praying
for no two lines. Because look how I could care
for something small and fragile. Look:
I could keep something I did not want alive.
Muscle Memory
Now I often wonder
if I was really in love at sixteen.
But still, a forest green Pathfinder
draws my eyes through the driver's side
window wondering if they'll find you.
That car must be in the junkyard
by now, but some muscles don't lose
their memory. One night your voice
through the phone telling me
look at the sky – see how it's orange
in the snow? Something
I never noticed then never forgot.
And isn't that what love is?
Waking up to the world glowing
around you. Staring at the sky
even after they’re gone.
We dismiss the firecracker
of feeling young, all explosions
and gasoline. Forgetting
something that shocks your touch
can still be admired from a distance.
Leave embers that flicker
through ash when love comes back
to root. And you realize
you recognize it.
Haley DiRenzo is a writer, poet, and practicing attorney specializing in eviction defense. Her work has appeared in Gone Lawn, Flash Fiction Magazine, Epistemic Literary, Eunoia Review, and Panoply, among others. She is on BlueSky at @haleydirenzo.bsky.social and lives in Colorado with her husband and dog.
January House Literary Journal 
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