My fish died today, after I changed his water last night. His name was, more or less, Fish.

He was a good fish, and I’m surpised he lived this long (fourteen months in my apartment, not sure how long before that). He always ate when I fed him, and never complained about a thing, even when I accidentally froze him (he rethawed just fine– that’s why my roommate called him Lazarus).

One of his favorite things to do was blow bubbles in the top of the tank, which I read somewhere is what bettas do when they’re happy (“ready to mate,” is what it actually said– “happy” was apparently a euphemism). I was amazed, too, at how often he did that. I would think it would be fairly miserable, hanging out in the same little tank every day, watching the world go by. But I’d come home from work, and stop by and check him out and feed him, and almost every day there’d be bubbles in the top of the tank.

I probably didn’t change his water as much as I should have. And I probably didn’t quite feed him everything I could– one of the manuals said to supplement his diet with bloodworms, but both my roommate and I got freaked out a little bit about keeping something called bloodworms (alive or dead) in our fridge, right next to our food. Sorry, Fish. Wish I’d been able to do those things better for you.

Nevertheless, I like to think you had a pretty good run. You seem like you enjoyed everything that happened, and I hope that, somewhere in all those times of me watching you and you watching me cook dinner, make sandwiches and read the paper there in my kitchen, you found a reason you were there with me. A little happiness, I hope– a serenity that, maybe, is found only in existing, in being.