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Everlasting

Naomi Stenberg

My friend, Dee, has a goldfish with five names. When the last one died, she replaced it using the same five names, creating for herself an illusion of perpetual eternity for Lollapalooza-Divine-Doris-Miss Arkansas-Smith. When asked, Dee rattles off the names like they can be found embedded in a rosary. She says the names. I peer in at the fish and wonder if it is the same fish I saw last time.

I don’t peer too long because I have bought into Dee’s illusion of everlasting pets. I don’t peer too long because my friend is eighty-six. She only has three names. I don’t know her middle name, just first and last. The key consideration is Dee is not a fish, wafting through the fake grass in her bowl. I can’t pretend to replace her. She cannot be replaced. When she dies, she will be done—at least in the incarnation we share—although, nothing is for certain, and she may come wheeling into another world of mine. And I’ll know right away because she has a mind, radioactive like a lightning strike, and a walk somewhat like a blue heron, both beautiful and heart-breakingly awkward.

This is a lot to think about when I am over at my best friend’s and have looked at her fish again. (She never announces its transitions.) Dee hands me a spoon and a bowl of delicious soup or ice-cream, depending on the occasion, and, seconds later, we are talking…miles off into the bright woods.

Naomi Stenberg is a queer, neurodivergent writer living in Seattle. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sky Island Review, Knee Brace Press, Does It Have Pockets, Corridor, the anthology, Teacakes and Tarot, and elsewhere. She was the co-editor of Other Voices, an anthology for writers with mental illnesses.