SIGHS

     My Step-dad Johns’ huge ham-like hands are bloody. He is standing at the stainless steel kitchen sink. There is a white plastic five gallon bucket and a blurred trail of dirty footprints on the faded linoleum floor beside him. John reaches inside the white bucket and picks up a living fish, delicately grasping the smooth, gray green middle. He gently, carefully lays the fish flat on the scarred wooden fillet board. His left hand moves in a rough caress to flatten, as his right hand slices the fish open. He lifts the shiny flap of skin exposing still surprised organs in a jell-like layering. He always paused and with a slight shoulder drop, expelled a slow sigh. I ask myself now, long past when I can ask him, why did he pause? Why did he sigh?
  
    I like to think John paused to see the layers. To glimpse what makes us live, not watch what makes us die. Maybe Johns’ sigh was the simple sharing of a last breath. Or a way of making death have a sound, a moment, instead of the long working sounds of knife against wood and bone. Always, John had the sigh, than his shoulders would straighten as he slid his knife. The fish lay still.




from The Circumference of Hope