My Brother, the Salmon

He’s swimming upstream again, dogged and lean, ready to spawn his latest ideas. I wonder aloud if perhaps he doesn’t need to have all the answers. If I don’t want to be an egg factory or be beholden to the rules of the school that should be my business. So, I say, hey! let’s meet up back in the wide-open ocean. We could break with tradition, have a leisurely loll in the tide pools that smell of seaweed and sunbaked snails, gulls scolding overhead.

We’d nab pink crabs and purple shelled periwinkles, enjoy a happy-go-lucky day. He could pretend to be an actual brother. We’d do actual sibling things, like going to the coral reef ice cream shop to slurp squid ink sodas with krill ice cream through striped straws clutched between pouty lips. We could have a little back and forth about the hellish habits of humans dumping their junk in the sea, ruminate on the rumor we heard about slippery Cousin Trout. No doubt an old fishwive’s tale, I’d say with a smirk.

But his firm cheeks go wobbly and limp, like I’ve deflated him. Like I don’t get it. Like, why don’t I welcome him blowing iridescent bubbles of brilliance my way, his salty kid sister always sticking it to him! Why won’t I just open my gills, drink in his pearls?

I clamp my mouth shut, fan out feathery fins, swim toward the light. Breaking the surface, I gasp for breath before realizing: I have lungs. I test them out by screaming into the briny air.

Kathryn Silver-Hajo’s work appears in Atticus Review, Centaur, CRAFT, Emerge Literary, Ghost Parachute, Gone Lawn, Milk Candy Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Pithead Chapel, Ruby Literary, The Phare, and others. Her award-winning books include flash collection, Wolfsong, and YA novel, Roots of The Banyan Tree. kathrynsilverhajo.com.