Fish Market

We are walking down a hill. You and I.

The hill is steep. I have to overcorrect with each step. There is a pull in my stomach like a fish hook, dragging me down - so I grab onto your hand.

You, a counter-weight, a word I learned when building shelves.

At the bottom of the hill is the ocean (the Channel). It sprawls from us to France. I know there are fish in it because I’ve seen them while swimming and I know there are crabs because they sell them, de-shelled and made into paste, on the harbour.

When we get to the beach, we sit under the Arches.

(The Arches are hollows in the above walkway, backed up into the cliffside. People have sex there and do drugs there and families hide their children there, during hot summer days, so they don’t get heatstroke.)

You are carrying the bag and you open it. Inside there is wine (red), bread (French), and something that I can drink. I’m growing a thing inside me that means I can’t drink the wine.

It, a zygote, a word I learned in a beige-walled office at the hospital.

Growing it feels like learning words.

I’m drinking the coke feeling half guilty and half elated. It’s sugar caffeine something no one knows. Everybody knows what it does to mentos, to old coins, to jewellery, to dirty toilets. I drink it because it tastes too good not to, and the zygote makes me want it more than anything. It tastes like crisp air, fresh and cool, like the bubbles in my veins when you say you love me (I love you, I love you).

The wind comes from the sea. You, a steady presence, as you tear off a piece of bread and feed it to me with your fingers. Sturdy things that built shelves to hold my books.

We were here last year and watched a boat sink. You called the coastguard. We were here the year before and watched the harbour get built. The year before, we watched the moon rise red. And before. And before.

This year we’re watching the beginning. Everything comes in cycles.

The fish come - their legs spindly and not legs.

The one at the front wears seaweed like we would wear a crown. Around what isn’t shoulders, a string of pebbles.

The ones in the middle carry driftwood and bales of plastic to build the market stall.

The ones in the back carry nothing, wear nothing, look a bit lame and like they’re still in the ocean.

The fish set up closest to the Arches. It’s a good spot because people like to sit under the Arches (and have sex and take drugs and hide their children). They build their stand and fill it with pebbles, seaweed; it smells like brine. (Open a pickle jar, take a swallow.)

You, an empath - a word I learned at therapy - ask if they need help. You’re taller than the fish, even the towering yellowfin tuna spreading the seaweed to look more appealing. They ask you to do the marquee. It’s an old thing of torn plastic, painted white with chalk from the cliffs. You help, secure it to the driftwood with old rusty nails one of the fish hands you.

While the fish set up, the crabs come out, sideways, rushing across the sand. They are all brown in colour, like mud, except for one which is a bit more brick-red. That one goes off by itself, looks at the fish. Cocks its head in a way its exoskeleton (a word I learned from horror movies) shouldn’t allow it to. Then it skitters - one pincer after another in a blur of movement - back to the group.

The crabs set up like a military. Efficient. They’ve been placed by the ramp entrance to the beach, which is a spot almost as good as by the Arches. People will pass them first thing in, while they’re still excited, and last thing out, when they want to hold on to the experience.

The crabs are displaying bottle caps. They are separating them into groups, but they can’t read nor see colour. The logic of it escapes me. Some of the bottle caps are metal, old and rusted, some plastic and brand new, white logos on reds and blues easy to identify.

You’re done helping the fish. I’m done watching the crabs. More stalls go up on the beach, manned by sea creatures I don’t know the names of. (Taxonomy, a word I learned from a joke on social media.) There are more fish groups, separate from the first one. Some are preparing to sell food. I expect it’s vegetarian.

More people are coming to the beach now. You know some of them from the bar, I know some from the library. The ones we know ask about the zygote. We make the same joke every time (“getting enough sleep now in preparation!”) and they all respond in kind (“when we had ours, etc etc”). The repetition is both grating and soothing. I get to rehearse before each conversation.

Misanthropy, a word I learned in a different hospital, at a different time.

You come back and drink the wine. I drink the coke. We both eat the bread and watch as a group of monkfish and a group of something that looks like plankton argue about a space they are setting their stalls up on. Someone got a booking wrong, evidently, because they’ve both been placed at a spot closest to the sealine.

A thing of salt and waves comes to check on them and stop the commotion. Diffuse the situation before it escalates. It is good at de-escalation, this thing. Calm sounds, although not a voice. I don’t know what this thing is, have no word for it. It hurts to look at it directly, but not the way it hurts to look at the sun.

It’s like a depth, underwater, like opening eyes in the Ocean and the sting of salt that comes instead of vision.

Are you ready? you ask and reach out your hand to help me up from the sand. You’ve packed our bottles and the empty paper-plastic bag the bread came in.

We weave through the stalls, you half a step in front of me. We’re not used to the change in my gait yet. I always lag just one breath behind now; before we used to walk step in step and hand in hand.

There is a stand with sole selling rainbow fish scales strung onto wires to wear as necklaces. Next, mackerel with interesting pieces of driftwood, like grabbing finger bones, smoothed through an age spent in the water. You want to buy a couple of those. Will look good in a vase with some flowers you say, and I’m inclined to agree (because I always agree when you speak of the House - compromise or cooperation, both words I learned through trial and error).

The mackerel manning the stand looks old somehow. There is a suggestion of wrinkles around its beady, yellow-rimmed eyes and flat-split mouth. It doesn’t blink. It stares somewhere to the right of you, or maybe to the left, it’s hard to say with how the eyes are situated (one on each side of its head, monocular vision, prey vision). It’s probably handy for spotting thieves.

The mackerel wants a lock of hair in exchange. It doesn’t say so, but we both understand anyway. They use it to make their nests softer, for the eggs to adhere to it instead of rock crevices. Makes it easier to protect the eggs from prediction, from cannibalism, accidents, even while they’re being guarded. Your hair is too short so I offer mine and the old mackerel snips a chunk of it off with rusted scissors. It’s a choppy cut. Not much, probably not enough to be noticed, but I leave a part of me with the fish, and we move on.

The thing of salt comes at us sideways, like it’s not coming at all. It looks to you, then to me, then to the zygote. Reaches out what isn’t a hand, touches the bottom of my sternum with what isn’t a finger. Says something like everything comes and comes again. I feel a flutter even though it’s too early and the thing says next year you will see.

We gather our purchases. Head back home, across the beach, past the crabs, up the hill.