I have developed this sixth sense. I can look at a fish and tell how much longer it has to live like tasting boiling macaroni. "This one is going to die," I noted not more than an hour ago. It swam around, not eating when I fed and, later, as if I had been alerted by some ghostly hand I put down the Chimera's poetry and looked again. There he was Laying softly across the purple gravel. Sometimes when they die, they float sometimes they are tangled in the plastic plants Sometimes they lay across the bottom of the tank like a carpet of beautiful blood gold. At first death I was upset Then I became resigned Then I decided to only clean them out twice a day my dead goldfish Lately they have died all in one day Five today And I have one lonely one left. He won the prize. Still alive, without all his friends. And I collect the bodies and flush them down the toilet. When the last one dies, I will vacuum the gravel and I will go buy another dozen goldfish another dozen worthless lives to feed my tank so that some day I can have *real* fish. Fish that are meant to live. It just seems a waste and a cruelty to start a world by drowning it in death.