Party Fish

Hello little fish. You’ve popped all your pills.
Hooked.
Why are you here, in a cooler full of strangers?
You’ve never danced a day in your life. You’re
forgetting how to swim, flopping around the deck,
hoping to pass yourself off as a predator.
Dragged from the pelagic deep; gasping for water.
Go ahead and press that menthol inhaler
to your flaring runny nostril, and fight to breathe.
Dilated.
Your eyes, used to a dark of the Pacific depths,
blur in the strobes, sunlight for eyes that have never seen it.
Bathe in the colors that ocean depths can only hide, the colors
of light you never knew you wore all your life.  
Ecstatic.
Too exhausted to move a fin, collapse in the cold ice.
The other fish have stopped moving. The cooler
is emptying. Your eyes are stuck open.