I go to pet stores. I watch the fish in their glowing tanks with the neon rocks, and they move together with that spastic and graceful unity that fish and birds seem to share. They rush, all at once, like surging blood cells toward the glass, and then turn and rush away again. I can hear them gulp their food. They are ridiculously gaudy. They are other world fantastical. They make me giddy.
Once, I stood looking at a tank, writing in my notebook, and a man beside me said, "Look," and he tapped the glass at a dead fish that floated on the top.
"So it goes," I said, thinking of Vonnegut.
"So gross?" he asked.
"No. So it goes."
I smiled a little.
