How to taxiderm(ize) a fish
- The first incision
It is sharp, precise, parallel to the backbone, a pointed laceration that finds its home in smooth white flesh. There is no room for hesitation, a simple dive into the unknown. Occasionally you will hear bones breaking as the blade is dragged millimeters above the viscera, but with more practice, you’ll learn to cut pristinely.
When he first pressed his hands against yours, you wondered how someone so utterly different could fold into you like origami.
And so begins the process of keeping the dead alive.
2. Skinning
Cleave the skin from the meat. It’s tempting to fillet the fish quickly, but keep the skin intact. They’ll notice; press an index finger on the glass and point out the fish in the tank with an open wound and halved fin and decide they’re bound for death. So piece the skin back together with care.
Wedge the scalpel under the overlapping scales and flay them apart until the fish lies undressed. The shimmering plates seem too pretty for the weak juddering mass they held together. Beneath the sterile light overhead, they shift and morph around you, and you think of the sequined dress you wore when you used to go dancing. Hold on hard to good memories: the halo of fabric around your hips, his hands on the small of your back, and the words that dripped down your ear that made your cheeks burn tequila.
He kept the sequins in his pocket as a prize of war and you remember how he would press them like branding irons against your skin and your tongue as a reminder in the later years. The dress with the missing sequins was left behind in the back of your closet along with vanilla sugar body spray and all the other things you’ve outgrown.
3. Gutting
Improperly done brings the tell tale smell of decay. Though death may be apparent no one wants to be reminded of it. Uncoil intestines stuffed with Chinese takeout and half chewed fortune cookies. Wrench out the heart with the aorta still attached, pumping in irregular beats from the first lamp that shattered against the wall in ceramic fragments of uncontained rage. Pull out the throat and place it into the hands of a familiar stranger.
Gouge the eyes too, glass replica beads will replace the empty sockets. Perhaps the passing children will tap on the display glass, mock “blink!” a couple of times and remark how similar the fish looks to the way it was when it was still alive.
4. Preserving
There is no one way of preserving that works the best, so inject the fish with the embalming fluid of your choice and make your way up from the tail to the head. Formaldehyde for the untouched dinner left on the dining table you wrap into tupperware. Ethanol for your resignation letter that you painstakingly type up on the computer, index finger hovering before hitting each key. Push the plunger until your knuckles press flat against the plastic and the blood disperses. Glycol ethers for the purple rosettes on your arms you cover with blouses in the summer. Of course there are sacrifices to be made, you think. This is love, it blooms with the flowers.
5. Stitching
Pull the skin until it is taut beneath your fingers and retrace your steps back to the point of the first incision. Let skin patch over the turgid flesh and empty cavities where organs should have been. Convince them that what flows through the veins is blood and not ethanol and formaldehyde. People will no longer see you as the girl in the sequined dress, but the woman in a blissful marriage.
6. Mounting
To the onlooker, the fish should look alive. Pry dead lips open so they’d wait for a few bubbles to escape. Prop the tail to the side as if it’s still darting through the water. You’d think that if you held onto it longer, painted it a deeper shade of blue, the thing in your hand that should have turned to dust would come back alive.
For a second, you think it might be better to just bury the fish.
But maybe a heartbeat is there.
When you press your ears against the crumbling skin, perhaps it’s the opening and closing of valves beneath the flesh instead of the shaking of your spent fingers.
Scatter the scales across the ocean backdrop, letting them peek through watercolor waves in the same way that the sun dances across the water
