We Were Fish People

Once upon a time, you and all our kind lived underwater: Fish People of the Under Reef. We lived deep deep down, far away from the harsh light of the sun and the grittiness of sand under our toenails. We made houses from coral and wrapped seaweed around our scaly skin for clothing. Hidden away from fisherfolk and boaters we kept safe and warm. Surrounded by those we loved, we held hands around the hot bubbles that rose up from the very Earth -- heat made especially for us. Without any light we had no need to keep track of time. Minutes? Hours? Days? None of it mattered to you or me. Time stood still, unable to touch us so far under the waves.

Once upon a time, you and all our kind were born with messy, brightly colored hair that sat upon our fishy heads. The strands were soft and they caressed your cheek each time you moved. No strand of hair was like another, and you once took pride in it. You were unique -- unlike any of the Fish People that called the Under Reef home. But one day you chose to slick your hair down with mud. You, disgusted by the way the bright locks floated up and twirled around your head like fireworks, chose instead to cut down to the root with the sharpest stone you could find. You were so confident in your decision that, over time, the others followed your lead until nearly each strand of hair in the Under Reef was lifeless, dark, and exactly the same. 

 I remember when you loved your home so very much. You were hopeful, you were beautiful. You were selfless. You could have -- you SHOULD have -- spent an eternity under the water with me, letting the force of the waves tickle your chest and ripple through your hair. But you wanted skin to feel the heat of the sun and feet to carry you across dry land. You decided to leave our way of life behind for promises of a better one. And as you grew, you swam closer and closer to the sun that we spent so long avoiding. With each year, your fins grew stronger, your tail longer, and your eyes more fixated on the surface. The life we had in the Under Reef no longer provided whatever it was you needed so badly.  

And one day — it was so long coming but I must admit I was blindsided all the same — you left. You refused the heat coming up from the ground and sought the warmth of the sky. You abandoned your seaweed skirt and stitched together a suit of garbage collected from reef. One after another; you, and each of your kind, moved up and up and up until the top of your head ever-so-gently breached through the firmament of the sky.

Every attempt to convince you to stay ended the same; your head tilting up to the surface wistfully. I wanted so badly to make you all stay here with me, but today I look around the place that we used to call home and I’m reminded of my failure. The coral houses have been abandoned. The tattered remains of the seaweed skirts collect on the ground. But now, looking over the city that was once the beautiful Under Reef, I realize that I’m just as guilty as you. My hair is short and greased, My scales have lost their shine. My tail has split and formed legs. The only piece of the real me that exists is my fishy head. From my tippy toes to my newly-formed collarbone, I resemble you: a naked, anxious, human. But from my neck and up to my protruding lips, I am still me. I am still the Fish Person that I always have been. For years I have found myself being tempted by the same light that took you away when I was still a child. That temptation is what took me away from my home -- from our home. 

For so long I thought that by getting away I would somehow be able to avoid the sickness that came over you when you got that damn gleam in your eye. How could you leave? How did you think that you could alter yourself and become something “human”? What possessed you to think that I would be okay here without you? Whatever it was, I felt the same itch. I felt the desire to follow your trail up and out of the Under Reef. I don’t know where you went when you left, but I wanted to find out. I rejected it every chance I could, but I’m so tired of being angry at you for leaving. I can’t be angry for you looking up to the surface because today, as I swim past the home that I boarded myself in for so long after you left, I find myself looking up for that light. As I grow nearer and nearer to the water’s edge, I begin to understand what caused you to move on. Perhaps you didn’t move “on” at all.

It’s been so long since I’ve been back to the Under Reef. Honestly, I’m not sure what I expected for what I would see when I came back. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t depart from the thought that you would be waiting for me -- you and everybody else. You would all be swimming around together with your fishy heads and scaly tails awaiting the moment when I would return and you would tell me how foolish you were. You would say that you were wrong for leaving and that you know see that your home is here. We would all embrace and swim and dance like we used to. We would be a family again.

But instead, I’m alone. Our house is in disarray and our lives a memory. The scales from my fishy neck are falling off, I find it harder and harder to stay underwater, and I feel myself swimming closer and closer to the surface. Our people are long extinct and you are long gone. As I swim up and up and up I feel the muscles in my chest scream out in pain. 

The need for air disgusts me but I crave it all the same. I’ve only just recently developed the desire to breathe the same air that you and the rest of our kind have become so attached to. I swim faster and faster, feeling my human limbs struggle against the task. I flail my extremities erratically and I leave a trail of scales behind me. My lungs scream out with the need to take in pure, human air. The moments as I approach the membrane between water and air are excruciating. Thoughts of our past flood my mind. Memories of a life left to die alone at the bottom of the ocean are behind me now, just as they were behind you so long ago. And in the instance that I cross from water into air, only a single memory was left in the fishy head I once had.

Once upon a time, you and all our kind were happy. But one by one… we grew up.