He Doesn't Have a Name

we called him hedus

short for

he doesn’t have a name

lyd’s goldfish didn’t live long with us

and that time was not memorable

because between all our misadventures

between me and lyd and jason and the rest

poor little hedus

was locked away in

his little tank in the corner of lyd’s room

he died just before christmas and

as we all prepared to go home to our families

we found the time for a quick funeral

for hedus

hedus didn’t burn at first

so we wrapped him in a

paper towel

soaked in rum

we learned that night how much jason loves fire

and how little we thought of that rum

it didn’t taste good

but it burned good

and scorched the imprint of a fish on the pavement outside our

door

we buried hedus in the mulch

i would like to say we found a single flower

growing where he lay the next spring

but we didn’t

and they re-mulched his grave long ago

and washed the ash marks off the pavement too.