Miracle Fish

Miracle Fish

The air that Manny carries around with him is as dense as water. That's the only way I know how to describe the feeling— The force one feels when they’ve swam too deep in a pool that squeezes in all directions. Gently crushing. Silently suffocating. It’s hard to be close to him over long periods of time without the risk of drowning.

It’s this feeling that wakes me up at night when I know he is standing over me.

This isn’t the first time I’ve woken up to his eyes starting at my back.

But I am wondering what I did this time? Was I not responsive enough during sex? Or that I am having it with someone else? Did he find something that I have to tirelessly explain is completely innocent? Did a “Number Not Available” light up on my phone at two in the morning?

If that was the case, I wouldn’t have a number to call back to sort everything out.

I don't open my eyes.

I don't move.

I just listen.

I don't know if it’s particularly quiet or I just stopped hearing altogether.

Like a drip from the ceiling that gets worse when it rains, I wonder when the collapse is going to happen.

Never if.

It’s always when.

At night it is the worst because everyone is sleeping. The house sinks into its own quiet, everyone breathing slowly like me. If he decided to grab me by the throat and hold me under until I stopped breathing, no one would hear it. Death would close over me without a ripple.

I know I wouldn’t be able to yell. The sound would die before it reached the surface, swallowed by the pressure. If his hands wrapped around my neck he would snap my vocal cords. The sound inside me would pop—the same way air bubbles burst when they try to rise through too much depth. Even if I were to survive, I don’t think I’d ever speak again. My voice would live somewhere beneath the current, trapped there, like a secret between us.

Feeling his dense shadow cast itself over me in an already dark room, I just feel like a body there. Not floating, not sinking—just suspended, thinking a thought I hadn’t finished yet. Time holding its breath with me. My body feels weightless and heavy all at once, the way it does when you’ve had to learn to float before swimming. And I can’t tell if I’m rising or falling.

I can sense him without seeing him. The room seems to tilt toward him, gravity bending around his presence. I imagine us both trapped in the same tide, me caught in its stillness, him searching for a surface he can’t find.

I try not to think of escape, because even that thought feels loud. Instead, I let myself drift in place, quiet and still, still refusing to move, waiting for the moment he decides what to do with me.

He wants to kill me.

He wants a reason to kill me.

To grab me by the throat and hold me under until I stop fighting.

Only then will he feel safe from me.

And I will be safe from him.

I couldn’t fight back.

If no one else I’ve talked to could fight him, how could I?

If everyone else is scared of him, why shouldn’t I be?

How does one fight water without threatening it?

How does someone fight water that can’t feel? Because that is exactly what Manny is like. Dense, dangerous water that both holds life and death in its hands.

I know God wouldn’t fight him even though he would win. To God, this madman is a child who got the worst in this world. To God, Manny is suffocating like a fish out of water, and all God wants to do is pick him up and put him back where he belongs.

But Manny is a violent, slippery fish—always unknowingly slipping through the hand that’s trying to save him. No matter how softly he’s held, he thrashes against it. Mistaking care for capture. As if his whole body remembers the danger of being touched.

He doesn’t mean to hurt anyone. He doesn’t know he is hurting anyone. He’s just trying to take the same breath in this world we all are. Like us he is fighting good and evil. But evil looks like you sometimes. The truth is, he can’t tell the difference. While most parts of living for us look gray, his version of the world is a variety of Pablo Picasso paintings— distorted and abrupt with sharp edges and loud disturbing colors and images.

And still, some part of you keeps trying, believing that if you hold him just right—gentle, certain, patient—he’ll stop fighting long enough to realize he’s safe.

He wants to kill me.

My lungs would be filled with the weight of what he couldn’t say. Of what he can’t explain. By the time anyone would have found me, the fish would have already learned my name, and his tears would be the current of an apology. To both of us.

The air between us is so thick I could hear my heartbeat in it. I still don't move. Even with all the possibilities of what the outcome of waiting is. I’m afraid that if I move or speak, it might spill over into something I couldn’t take back.

I hear him crossing that invisible threshold between him and the bed.

Then it’s as if fear itself climbs into bed beside me. I can only hear the mattress sigh. His arm slides across my waist, heavy and human, pulling me into himself as if pulling me onto shore.

He presses his face into my hair and breathes like he’s been underwater too long.

He murmurs something soft but I still can’t hear.

I keep my eyes closed still pretending to be asleep.

The air feels lighter for a moment, almost kind. I let myself believe it’s a miracle, the way he is out of water sometimes.