Belly Up

I’ve always heard
that dead fish
float.
But you are nose down
in the gravel; body small,
bladder air-empty.

Others swim around you,
staring through the glass,
sucking at food scum
on its side:
ignore your limp sway, like
Rockweed on the seafloor,
unresisting in the bubbled mist
boiling through the tank.

You are weed
of this water;
something to be pulled.

I am ready with my net…and yet
your walleyes are open,
enamel black dots.

You
lie too still
in the water.