POST ANIMAL // LAST GOODBYE: A Song for the Ones Who Never Got to Say It

Canteen Fish: A Poem — A companion piece for the ones still swimming through air, memory, and the inescapable pull of home.

side b

Memories written in swirling dust reminding us it’s all connected.

canteen fish

i wish i could go 

back to the drought 

not the desert— 

never the desert

please, 

i’m a big apple girl now

though i do often

find myself feeling nostalgic

and homesick for the 

canteen fish

maybe because i am one

a desert dweller 

chasing her tail 

kicking up dirt 

and creating dust devils

its lore building, sure

but at what cost?

the canteen fish isn’t just a fable

from a dusty 100+ 

year old newspaper 

my grandpa found and told us—

it’s a prophecy and guide post

all in one

a paradox swimming in air 

and dirt like a bad dream 

i used to be all sage and 

neon lights

with a name the same

as my mother’s birth place

with my favorite willow tree

in the front yard

i carved my name in as a child

or hiding in the oleander hedges

i switch the hedges for a tattoo

on my ribs 

‘as within, so without’ 

i am made of poison

grown in and from the venom

yet without it, i would not be the 

creature i am today 

i’m trading the vast,

desert unknown of my past

to the claustrophobic 

concrete jungle of my future

i wouldn’t trade it

even though i wish i could 

go back to the drought,

the not knowing,

the blissful ignorance 

L O L

instead gloria cut me wide open 

letting the red and blue 

and electricity pulse through me

channeling someone —

oops,

something—-

i don’t fully understand 

i can’t unknow

i can’t unfeel 

or unhear 

it’s all tethered in me 

and my aching, weary bones

binding me to an

extraterrestrial contract that,

again, i didn’t ask to sign

but here we are

it’s a part of me i can’t

extricate because i don’t know

where i begin and it ends

or vice versa

a tangled web or symbiosis— 

who knows

probably both honestly 

i just want to go back to 

the simplicity of the before

of the not knowing 

and casual and comfortable air

i existed in

is that too much to ask?

sometimes i find myself wishing

to delete them all together 

so i wouldn’t know anything 

it’s all very 

clementine kruczynski

of me

“i’m just a fucked up girl 

who’s looking for my own 

peace of mind; 

don’t assign me yours.”

i’m alike her in more ways than one,

more ways than i care to admit

and i had my joel once upon a time

but i forget about him until i don’t

until the synapse hit and snap

and then i’m there all over again 

i have a tattoo of her 

on my forearm i did myself

she has flowers coming

out of her spotless mind

mines maybe weeds—

hard to find flowers that

are drought resistant

jury is still out though

maybe that’s as close as i get

sometimes i just wish i could

go back to

the fucking

drought 

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April 15, 2025. I didn’t know it then, but this piece would become an unexpected companion to Post Animal’s Last Goodbye, which came out just two days later. Funny how music and memory always seem to find each other at the right time. I hope you find what you need, too — the desert and my canteen fish friends are waiting for you.

You can find more personal poems and essays over at my Substack, The Nightingale Sonnets.

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