Little Fish
Drunk Girl holds my hair back, pets my head, says Good, good, get it out. Hands me wadded toilet paper, tells me to wipe my mouth, to blow, and takes the soiled tissue from my hands, tender as communion. Drops it in the bowl. Drunk Girl, still stroking my hair. It’s ok, you’re ok now, she breathes as my breathing slows, then leans back against the wall. She slides up, her palms signaling steady, steady, till she gains her footing, grabs my hand.
***
It takes sixteen visions for the priests to finally believe St. Bernadette—they only begin to when the words immaculate conception strangle on her lips, glimmering and strange as sunfish struggling in a mud puddle. Her tongue tumbles, the prayer left gasping on the carpet, an indignity of righteousness stinking and squirming at their feet. God bless us and our slender, choking bones, the needles of our fins, our slime and scales, and the way that idiots believe us to be fools. Sixteen visions later, begging her forgiveness, kissing the blood and dirt from her knees, and all it took was just a little more humiliation—ah, ambrosia, the salt-sweet tears of the powerless.
***
Drunk Girl has an ichthys—a Jesus-fish—tattooed on the inside of one wrist, and it leaps each time she turns a card, the two of us cross-legged on the bedroom floor. The Two of Swords, the High Priestess and The Moon, doing backflips on the carpet, trembling with the bass that thunders from the basement. Our fortunes muddy, our lives still so unclear, Drunk Girl smells like weed, patchouli, warm beer, new sweat. God bless us and our kindnesses, the way the small can love the small. Drunk Girl tokes and holds it, passes me the joint, her stopped lungs swelling as she grimaces Don’t drink any more, ok? If anything happens, no one will believe you. The ichthys flops, gills at the air, beneath its simple lines a scar, fishhook-shaped and twisting.
Jennifer Maloney writes poetry and fiction; find her work in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Does It Have Pockets, Synkroniciti Magazine and many other publications. She is the author of Evidence of Fire, Poems and Stories (Clare Songbirds Publishing, 2023) and Don’t Let God Know You are Singing, (Before Your Quiet Eyes Publishing, 2024). Jennifer is a parent, a partner, and a very lucky friend, and she is grateful, for all of it, every day.
