We come home after twelve days
of searching to nine swollen goldfish
floating in the tank, paled enough
to match the dull paint of the back wall.
The lonely pleco is angry with them. I can’t
blame him. It could be me in a few days.

The plants, too, have withered into droopy
skeletons. I touch a Gerbera and she crumbles
at my fingertips. They are the weightless
dust of good days. Nobody remembered
them once. It’s one tear less to have them
dead and here. But how to bury our missing

in a place to revisit, plant a tree, and touch
the leaves somehow breathing in the same
polluted air? So on top of the goldfish grave,
I scatter the colorless Gerbera dust, and then
submerge the Gerbera in the tank. We need
new prayers now. But nobody has got any.