The jug of the Aquarius bears water, and all
that is borne from it. In this vast sea and ocean,
there reside two koi fish, the sign of the Pisces
which my mother bears. At the base of the pond
that they swim in, there lie many dull crystals,
their once bright red hue now faded by the pushing
and pulling of the tides of time.
The scales of the Libra tip unjustly.
Before the beginning of this time, there was my mother’s
mother. Her brown eyes glowed like honey in the sun,
and her teeth gleamed white like the fur of polar bears
when they bathed in ice cold water. One night, my mother’s
mother looked up at the stars. They had aligned, and she
was staring at Cancer, the sign of the crab.
My grandmother’s heart is made of gold.
And when one day my mother’s mother nicked herself
with a knife while she was slicing tomatoes and her finger
wouldn’t stop bleeding, her eyes were still glimmering
with the shimmer of the moon when the doctors told her
it was only going to get worse from here. And so it went,
a new drug for every blood cell that formed from her
defective marrow, a balm that was short-lived when the doctors
told her there were no more drugs they could give to ease the pain.
But gold does not weigh as much as ten thousand dollars.
And when her strength had finally deteriorated and her skin was as pale
as the shine of her polar white teeth and she could no longer
get out of bed, her eyes still burned, the imprint of the ever present
pincers burned into her retina and onto her soul. Even when the doctors
told her she would no longer be receiving treatment and all my mother
could do was bring her ginger lemon tea when she asked for it,
my mother’s mother still shone with the aura of the night sky
and all its glory. But the night could not remain forever, and her
eyes would shut before they could turn to honey one last time.
She could have been here today.
And so my mother watched her mother die. And the koi fish wept and
the jug turned into a field of blood red diamonds that held no value.
Anaale Camynta-Baezie is a current undergraduate with majors in Psychology & Cognitive Science.
Camynta-Baezie says about the piece: “This one was inspired by my grandmother who was lost to cancer before I was born. I introduced the zodiac theme initially just for wordplay, but it ended up weaving itself into the whole narrative.”
“The Water Fan”, Winslow Homer (1972).