Ode to the pufferfish

I once caught a puffer fish

With jowls like a toad.

I wanted to let it go

I wanted to set it free,

Free to swim away to the depths of where it came from

To meet another puffer fish and have puffy puffer babies

(If that’s what puffer fish like to do)

But they all said no: So hideous it must die

No one wants a puffer fish reproducing.

So it hung there gasping at the end of life’s cruel rod,

And no one deigned to even touch it

So I dug my scaly heels into the firm wet sand,

Curled my fins against silicone particles of resistance

Until the fish dropped frenziedly from the hook
Its body bruised beautifully; a savage mouth
That might have called for help if it didn't remain so silent"
A hostile, black fuck you from the puffer fish

As the waves they came and picked it up

To carry it some way, temporarily aloft but bereft

A lonely puffer fish, battered by the swell

With bulging eyes ogling its tormentors on the shore.

And the ugly puffer fish wouldn’t swim

As they all kicked shells at it,

Threw wreathes of seaweed around it,

Like a pyre for a life under no circumstances to be lived.

And I stood there urgently, calling it to swim

As its proud body swelled and seethed in anger

Her pearlescent scales reflected my sadness

For this ugliness drowning in the safety of the shallow water