Mondays are for memories

A memory from when I was about 11.

We’re staying at the home of family friends and I wake in the middle of the night.

Unable to sleep I creep downstairs in the dark. In the corner of the kitchen a blue light glows.

It’s a fish tank and I kneel over the back of the couch staring into the wet. The fish laze about, following their own mysterious whims.

Suddenly someone else is there, another child awake in the night, our host’s middle boy, a few years younger than I.

We silently sit, our bodies in a dark kitchen, our minds in the miniature underwater world in front of us.

Eventually we go our separate ways and drift off to sleep. 

A different tank. A different fish. The same wonder.