A Tiny Deep Sea by Lori Yamamoto

The stone ledge is cold. I am staring at the water. The koi are slow dreams, orange and white and black thoughts moving without any sound. I feel like that girl in the old movie you showed me. Full of angry want, wishing the Goblin King would just please come and take it all. This pond is too small. My reflection is a stranger. Two options appear, both are beautiful and strange, like a secret I must keep. Option one: lie back. Let my hair become riverweed. A quiet Ophelia. A dramatic, pretty ending. (Maybe they would be sorry then.) Option two: a ship. Not a pond, but a wide ocean. A lion at the prow. To sail past the world’s last morning. To find a different sky. The koi kiss the surface. They make a perfect, silent ‘O’. Is it a zero? Or is it a whole new world? They do not say to me. My mother calls out. Her voice is a thread through the glass. “Lori, come inside.” The spell breaks into pieces. I am just a girl again. I carry the pond inside my chest now, secretly. A tiny, deep sea for dreaming of drowning or sailing. It is my own labyrinth. Mother, it is all foolishness… right? Obviously. But the koi know. They are still swimming.