Ever since our shower faucet was leaking and caused both our bathroom walls and ceiling to grow mold and our drain to clog with mineral deposits, my roommate and I have been without a usable bathroom for over a week and have been referring to our campus’s gym facilities for bathing and going to the bathroom, awaiting even acknowledgment of the problem by our landlord.

This experience has made us very fortunate because we have once again discovered our loves of swimming while sneaking a dip whenever we use the pool showers. We’ve enjoyed a normal swim for several visits now; however, one day, our naive vision of a perfect amphibious Utopia was suddenly shattered by the discovery of this little fellow who was not also a member of our supreme species:

My roommate dove to the very bottom of twelve leagues of sea at the deep end to scare him to the surface. When this little fellow saw my roommate quickly approaching, he let out a huge gasp–which proved to be his ultimate mistake. He subsequently had to rise after letting out all if his air supply in terror, where we flopped him out of the pool using my roommate’s flippers and scooped him up in a cup.

Afraid he might escape in the interim, we brought our new friend along to Wal*Mart while we bought preparations for his new living quarters. In a kind-of reverse-Stockholm Syndrome manner, we have fallen in love with our little captive.

We now get great thrill watching him hunt flies that we capture for him.

I am.
Neither my father nor my mother, but of both.
I am small
But like my brothers, I am my own.

I grow.
It’s a race against the clock, and I was made eager to grow.
I am alive
And like others in my race, taste human rights.

I dream.
Not in thought, but my heart beats the rhythm of the human spirit,
Freedom’s song.
The passion of humanity and individuality flows through my veins, it’s how I was made.

Ask why.
My mother could be unwilling to care for me, or might have been raped,
I do not know.
But I do know I’m not to blame.

Ask why.
My only protection from the world has turned on me.
Turn away
You won’t protect me from my kin, though I have no fighting chance.

Ask why!
I wish I could understand how the world could be so cruel as to blame me.
In this world
That promotes this and only this way out, I wish I wasn’t made guilty.

I cry.
I might be incapable physically, but I’d try.
The heart that
Is still in formation, oh how it can feel heartache.

I cry.
This is how it feels to be forsaken, and now I’ll never meet my first love, laugh with friends, or chance the American Dream.
I think little
But if only I’d been given the chance for after-thought, these are what I’d say.
Yes, if I had a voice before my death sentence, these are what I’d plea.

I die.
If only I was given the chance to forgive you and this world, then I could have tried.
But I die,
I die.