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As I swam in the bathtub, they wondered what they had done to have a fish instead of a daughter My father sat back as I thrashed against the hook of his hands His mouth and eyes: three blank holes, staring at the creature he reeled from his wife’s thighs Mother pressed my thin-lipped grimace to her breast Nipples bloody, pink as worms, she thought I would bite if not suck She wondered if it was the poison she ingested while I was gestating She worked at a plant where beets burned into sugar Smoke drifted in manufactured clouds Air sweet as pure honey Father believed it was punishment for all the fish laid on my grandfather’s butchering block Frantic, golden eyes wide as the screwdriver came for their brains Maybe she’s not a penance, my mother said, but a gift from God So many of Jesus’s miracles were born out of swarms of bass And maybe it was the thought of God loving them so much, he crept between their entwined bodies to deliver a wonder Maybe it was that their trailer home, with its canyons of cracked vinyl, peeling paint needed a little magic Or maybe it was the look in my fugitive eyes when I stared back at my father— so human, so afraid of death— that made him decide to ignore the operas of sirens that sprang in shipwrecks from my lips He cupped me in his palm My scales slipped off Like a sequin cocktail dress, they collected on the floor and revealed skin Vulva ugly and purple, loose like the lips of a many-hooked fish, but human   See, my mother said, it’s a child after all