I Dreamt That We Were Fish Poem by Liz Oates

(2009)

When you woke up next to me
On that soundless, yellow afternoon
When the sun was blurring our thoughts
You told me about how when humans speak,
Their tongues move like desperate worms.

They have things called lips
Which shape sounds that
Turn into music and words.

And sometimes,
If you swim close enough to the bank,
You can hear their songs
Like rushing currents,
Pushing you forward.

I didn’t believe you,

But I believed
The fractured movement of your gills,
Your gaping mouth, pleading with the atmosphere for oxygen,
Your dark, round eyes,
Staring into me like bright stones,
The way my stomach crawled into my throat when you spoke,
And fell asleep on the back of my tongue,
The fluidity of your body,
Bracing you against the river’s flow
And that there is poetry in every fisherman’s shining hook
That comes to bring us to the surface.

When you finished your story,
Neither of us said anything
And I knew that the synchronicity
Of our heartbeats
(Muted under infinite fathoms of water)
Was enough.