THE MIRROR CARPS

this woman, she bought two live fish
wanting to cook them for dinner
but she cannot resolve to kill them herself
so she puts them on the table
hoping they will die quickly

this other woman enters the room
and she sees the gasping fish
and she asks, “why don’t you kill them?”

the first woman explains why
and the second woman says that she cannot kill them neither
and she sits down
and she watches the dying fish
and those are mirror carps
and imagine you could look at yourself in a mirror carp
and imagine it could talk

after a while, the second woman says, “I won’t eat these fish,”
and the first woman says, “me neither,”
and now the two of them are waiting for the mirror carps
to die for nothing

the second woman was the sister-in-law of the first one
whose husband had just been murdered by the secret police
after the three of them had been deported from their home country
to a faraway land
because of some crime against the State
the man had been found guilty of

whether or not he did anything wrong
is hard to say since at the time of the events (some fifty years ago)
they were many random arrests
and perhaps that was all part of a machiavellian plan
to make everybody afraid of everybody else

when people get arrested nowadays or even killed
by this or that government
because they were “suspected terrorists” or
because it was another “terrible mistake”. . . . . .
when I hear about it, I sometimes think of those two women (real women)
who couldn’t kill or eat the mirror carps or let them live

::: ::: :::

[Picture: Fish by reading_is_dangerous]