The Girl with Goldfish Under Her Skin

She has few secrets with her translucent map skin of blue underground rivers visible to scale. Contours of overlapping knots oblivious to each other and to you – mesmerised by the girl with goldfish under her skin. Perhaps, you reflect, we all have goldfish, but we’ve never thought of looking for them. You make a mental note to check when you get home. But you will forget. Is it her glassiness that makes you dream of putting her in a tank the next time she comes for a consultation? You’re unable to pay attention to her list of symptoms – you’re back in anatomy class with that professor who insisted on failing you. If he’d produced a diagram of her, you’d have been a surgeon for sure! You wait for the flash of a golden tail – hadn’t realised you’d been holding your breath. What do raised antinuclear antibodies mean? Her voice penetrates your consciousness as the glow fades into depths hidden by dense lumpy organs. Oh, those lucky organs. You reassure her with a voice you don’t recognise – Low titre ANA is commonly seen in the healthy population. You rush her out of the room and hope she doesn’t return.

Samantha Carr is a PhD Creative Writing candidate at the University of Plymouth exploring chronic illness through prose poetry. Her work has been published in Acumen, Arc, Corporeal, Consilience and The Storms Journal. She can be found on Threads and Instagram as @samc4_rr