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A Fish From the Deep

Jennifer Clagett

I laid myself down in the mud.

And that was the end. There was nothing after that, and if there was ever anything before,
the memories erased themselves as I sunk deeper into this strange form of death.

And I laid there and I thought. I thought about the present because there was nothing left
of the past, and there was no future to speak of. So I closed my eyes and imagined my
history. I made myself a new life in those moments as I lay in the mud of my mind. I threw
together things I had heard of and those things which had never before been dreamt.

And I smiled. Because there it was ... my life, etched out in its whole.
And I opened my eyes.

And a funny thing happened. From the sky there came a downpour of tiny, white daisies.
They fluttered about me silently and fell to the mud. Just like I had read. Just like the author
had described it. The daisies fell and they covered the mud. And they covered my mind.
And I thought, Now this is real ... this is, in fact, much too real.

This is, in fact, symbolic.

So I shook off the daisies, lifted myself from the mud, and went to eat breakfast.

Daisies Sharon Klinder

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