Two of them standing in the water, one on the dock
with the three big flopping pike. Zach is holding
and tilting the laptop. They’re watching how to
take the Y-bone structure out. They’ve asked me
for a sharpener and now Noah’s bent over the fish
with the knife and the video going. He’s slicing
slowly at just the right angle to catch the bones
and leave no strays. They’re all steady and dedicated.
I like watching them. I’m hopeful when I do, because
of the smoothness of their movements, eye from screen
to fish, fish to screen as if the man filleting on screen
is right there on the dock. I am the one still divided
into segments, who hasn’t yet learned how distance
isn’t distance, only a different medium.
Then for the frying they’re doing it again, propping
the laptop on the counter of the tiny kitchen,
flour everywhere, with egg white whipped to a froth,
each piece dipped in that, then into a mixture of—
is that curry, for heaven’s sake? Then the intense
collaboration of skillet and hands and screen,
such serious responsibility for it all, for the whole
process, from the clever underwater video they made
themselves, to table, none of the self-consciousness
that sets things apart from each other. They’re proud
of getting the Y-bones out. Inside one fish
was a whole lure, wicked big, as big as the stomach,
with its hook, the fish still living until then, still
thrashing until they cut it open and relieved it
of its terrible, deathly burden, everything
turning out exactly as it should.