Gold in black and white

I'm carrying weight around these days like a pocketbook, slung over my shoulder, as old as my Italian grandmother. I'm a fish in a broad bowl in a white and black coffee shop, gold stands out but does nothing for the circles I make, endless and round and round. I am perfect from the outside, my gills move in and out, my stroke is effortless, the world outside curved as it should be, the pastries in their case, the man with the bald head and the tattoo sleeve, the girl with the porcelain skin, the milk and sugar and straws and spoons lined up straight in front of burning candles, an altar to life, as we know it. I'm down, I said, I can't shake it, and I took another swim about. You don't seem that way, he said, the last swallow of orange tea, ice crunching. But I am, I said, it's here, in this pocketbook. Don't you see it?