i am taking a poetry class again, finally

"From my mother's journal"

I threw away the plastic bag you had clutched, that soft-sided world.
The fish breathed heavily, sides heaving, after you'd poured him into his gallon tank.

I had just read you a book about First Nation traditions--
children growing into names
and then out, like snakes and skin.

I spied as every morning
you pressed your ear against his tank
and whispered--What's your name today?

When, the first day after we'd brought him home, I was packing your lunch,
you demanded I leave out the goldfish crackers.
They look too much like him, you told me.

After a week, he grew tiny white spots
like blisters over his scales.
Ich, you told me, It's a fish disease.
So we bought medicine.

Your breath, when you watched him, fell into the same rhythms.
You both sighed.
You both gasped.

The woman at the pet shop told you,
when he'd died after only two weeks and we brought him back,
that there wasn't
anything you could have done.

You told me we couldn't bury him, because--
What name would we put on his grave?