To Be Fair

There are countless poems about fish eyes. In the dimsum restaurant
I recite you another while you stare down our dinner. You are seventeen

and have never eaten a fish whole, so I have to strip its flesh for you,
pile it neatly on the side of your plate; there, you pick at the bones,

your mouth pressing sour at the meat tinged grey. You do not turn away.
I tell your rice the same tale my mother told me: the eyes torn

from their carcass, affection stuck cold in her throat. Here is a metaphor
you haven’t heard. Here is a symbol more bitter than an orange.

I offer you the eye: you accept it, hold it in your mouth, spit it out
when you think I’m not looking. So there’s humiliation in loving

someone containing more multitudes than you, so what. So I’m not afraid
of the deep sea, so you get motion sickness on boats. I’d apologize if I meant it.

There are so many schools of fish in the ocean. I can be your eyes
in all of them. I miss you. Please ask.