Captives
I caught him in his bathroom dumping live fish
on account of he was moving house. If he loved me
he’d set the fish down right this instant!
He didn’t love me but he liked me well enough
to stop, to drive across town, over speed bumps,
to his new place, me with that half-filled tank
in my lap, the fish in a tiny tempest. He moved
them in. They lived. He felt a little happy about it
and to celebrate he drove fourteen blocks
to the pet shop and held my hand through the dark
hall of fish where eels shrunk from us and
a girl with a tarantula in her shirt spooned
ghost shrimp into a plastic bag of water.
I held them all the way home. I didn’t love him
but I stayed for six or eight more months
while the ghost shrimp wheeled and dealed and
sometimes died and ate their dead. You could see
every inch inside them and still not see enough
to tell one from the other. Clear bodies,
that’s what they had, and instincts. Imagine
such a vulnerable thing at your mercy.
Caitlin Castelaz is a midwest poet living in New York. Her poems have been published in North Dakota Quarterly, Chiron Review and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in poetry from Hunter College.