At one point I think, in everyone’s lives, there comes a series of moments where spending time in a quiet place, like the top of a mountain or within an attic, becomes a priority. My early twenties were like that. I had myself a mediocre pond, which was technically in a park, but I didn’t pay the park much attention. It was always filled with these bouncing children, their loud and giggly mothers, and tamed dogs. I was in between jobs, in between classes, in between interesting people, and I always thought it was very funny how I always felt like there was always something to be “in between.” And at the same time, I’d feel terribly selfish because it wasn’t like I was poor or starving, and it wasn’t like I didn’t have my family to support me. So I tried my best to think positively, to welcome the incomplete feelings and cherish the complete ones. And I knew that eventually, everything would be taken away from me. I would die, fall into the pond in front of me and just sink beside the fish. I imagined them nibbling at me and I felt this tickling sensation, but I tried to remember that I was dead and honestly unfeeling. I was the pierced whale, falling lifelessly and slowly for days and days and days, sinking continuously until I finally reached that bottom. The soil would push up and spread like an explosion from my disintegrating weight.

And there was one time, this was after my Aunt died, that I was squatting at the bank with a red Dixie cup between my fingers. The cup was from the long night before, used to drink away the beer at a party I wasn’t necessarily invited to, but I went because my friend wanted to flirt with boys, and I remember wishing she would flirt with as many boys as possible so she’d realize people weren’t worth a fuck, not a damn thing. Then I’d giggle at myself because I was immature and thought the boys probably were “worth a fuck” in her eyes.

The bottom of the cup was stained with the leftover beer, so I took it from the floor of the passenger side to throw it away. Walking through the grass and avoiding the groups of snickering families, I was distracted and forgot, passing the trashcans and going directly to the pond. I could see all those little tadpoles swimming around. It was that season, and their legs even started showing a little bit. It took me awhile to get the rhythm, but I’d dip the cup in, watch the water spread apart in circles as if to notify the rest of the fish through sonar, and I’d catch a few of the tadpoles and throw them back in violently. They’d spread out across the water, as if I were skipping stones. Then they’d all swim away rapidly and return to the same spot. I don’t even know why. I guess that area just felt safe to them even though it wasn’t. Maybe they just didn’t have a good memory. They were stupid, then I laughed at myself and thought how even more stupid it was for me to outsmart them. So when I caught a few more, I sat Indian style and stared into the cup like a scientist and his specimen. They were changing all right. Their eyes seemed bigger, but I bet they didn’t see much considering I had just caught the lot of their family.

I started to think about my Aunt again. It had been a few weeks since her big accident, the one that flipped her car a few times, right off of the road and into a ditch. But I told myself that it didn’t really bother me anymore. It doesn’t bother me. It was just a half empty bottle, useless. It became my mantra until we found out that one was not useless, but a few other bottles made them perfectly toxic enough.

I pictured her falling to the bottom of the pond, even sinking below the soil. I imagined a little flower, like a dandelion or something white, peeking and sitting up like in a cartoon. She had this butterfly tattoo on her right shoulder blade. She always told me she liked winged creatures, but I did remember before she actually got it, how my mom was scolding me for my tattoo, and my aunt defended me a little, but qualified it with I would never get one of my own, but you can do you what you want. And I hated how people changed, but never evolved.

So when I looked at the tadpoles again, they started to look like butterflies because I guess butterflies change like tadpoles change, even if the steps are different, and even if butterflies are supposedly more beautiful than frogs. I imagined a large square mirror. On one side was this black and white butterfly that looked an awful lot like my Aunt’s and it was flying around, but not outside the perimeter of the mirror, but its reflection was this repulsively brown frog, and I thought it so incredibly hideous with its warts and its sliminess. I imagined the mirror splitting in two, falling and smashing the butterfly and the frog. It felt calming – their death.

Looking into the Dixie cup, those tadpoles were still wiggling around and I thought it was about time they finally came out of the water, even if they weren’t really ready yet, so I laid them in the grass softly and watched them writhe on Earth with everyone else I knew.