Here I am swimming round and round, watching all the swirly green and pink stuff in my bowl swish by.

Eyes popping, orange tail speeding me along as I hustle and bustle for some attention and flakes of fine food that occasionally gets sprinkled into the water, swirling like sun kissed jewels in the shaft of sunlight that lights up some of the dark waters I live in.

It is these specks of light that I swim towards, the delight and luxury of being bathed in the warmth and light that slants dancing in a beam and brightens my mood, on days like this I could swim for miles, do a sassy little dance in front of the He fish and never want for much more.

But then there are the dark days the days that the sun does not shine, the days when swimming is a necessity as is the constant search for food that often I let slip past me and sink to the bottom of the tank unwanted.

My orange tail is slower on these days, life is aimless and my head is full of listlessness and my large eyes can barely look out of the glass walls at the world outside.

Occasionally some child will tap on the glass and point squealing with delight at the sight of me and my fish friends all caught, wide eyed in the loneliness of our existence.

The mother will often tell them not to tap on the glass as it will scare us, so then they press their chubby cheeks hard to the glass instead and stare and stare quite rudely.

If only they knew that once they have turned away from the glass they will take steps from their childhood and their lives will change as they grow and become nothing more than fish in a sea of the busy world, sometimes happy in their beams of warm light and sometimes alone in the darkness of it all.

It's so very hard to keep swimming sometimes.

Wouldn't it just be so much easier to not?

But then just as I am prepared to let go and stop this endless circling, breathe out my last bubbles and sink to the bottom of the gloom, I see a small beam of sunshine begin to filter in the water ahead, it gets brighter and there are the diamonds once more floating down the now bright yellow beam, I long to feel once more the warmth and bathe in the light.

With one great swish of orange I surge towards it eyes full of fishy tears.

Jayne

A Moodscope member.