Seahorses
We struggle for life, gasp for water
and we die, wriggling and contorting into position.
Our dried carcasses serve as amusement.
Fifty years we’ve been on display,
dust gathering in our rigid and bony structures,
souvenirs for those whose lives were more exciting.
They pull us out to reminisce about their wild youth,
our magic now stripped by time,
and they talk to each other about us and how they miss us.
Some of them forget about us,
about how we thrived in the waters before being rescued,
collected as memorials.
They don’t know about the vibrant reefs like we do,
about the others who didn’t make it or we carried back
to other grey places where they too would be forgotten.
Many of us are labeled for easy identification,
classified and sorted so onlookers can gaze at our husks
in wonderment or disgust… or a bit of both.
Our tiny bodies have become too numerous,
too many have been broken or discarded,
but most of us will fade into the dark obscurity, lost.
The new fashion has been to provide a tank,
to adopt a bit of our habitat and collect several specimens,
lives lived with names and memorialized
as members of families, temporary and disposable.
We exist as novelty, and still a part of their youth,
a part of that colorful past they will talk about one day,
sharing the photos with their children and grandchildren.
They’ll talk about us, about how much they love us,
pulling us from the drawers and boxes to prove themselves,
they’ll show videos they took of the tanks filled with water,
convinced that they are showing great love for us.
But when they are no longer beings asked to show off
their specimens, their carefully curated collections,
they’ll put us away again and go back to their real lives.
We will keep wishing that our dried bodies would stop
finding their way into souvenir shops of those who
do not want to dip into the water and experience our lives.
We don’t want to live in tanks either, playthings of people
who do not understand that our beauty has not been for them,
that our magic was meant for ourselves.
The sun is coming up on the horizon,
Christopher Street is quieter than it used to be,
and I wonder if a generation is coming
who will realize the world that was fought for,
and I wonder if they will long for the days
when they were precious trinkets of other people’s youth.
Written 1 July 2009 in Anchorage, Alaska & 5 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.
Brian Fuchs, “Seahorses” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)