Wish
Last summer, I shared with a friend my plan to explore a new area in town - our local reservoir. I saw a quiet excitement flash across their face, and when I asked about it, they told me that a very special fish lives there. “It’s been there since I was a little kid.” Though I urged them to tell me more, they refused. “You’ll just have to go find it yourself. It’ll be better that way.”
That afternoon, as if floating on the butterflies in my stomach, I hurried to the Porter Howard Reservoir in search of the mystical fish. Having never set foot in the area before, I immediately got lost in the woods. The path to the reservoir was a tangle of twists and turns, and just as I was ready to give up, the trees parted. Before my eyes lay a flat pane of glistening water, still as glass, reflecting the sky. “There are fish in there,” I thought as my feet touched the ground. Eagerly, I stepped forward and approached the water’s edge, my eyes dancing across its surface like the countless sunborn scintillations winking back at me.
I stood there, ready to meet the mysterious fish, but as moments turned into minutes, I realized I had no way to summon it. Should I whistle? Toss a rock? Disturb the water somehow? No - perhaps food would work, though I hadn’t brought any. After a time, I decided to walk around the perimeter of the reservoir, searching for any sign of the fish. I found nothing and reluctantly returned to work, where I told my friend my search had been fruitless. She suggested that next time I bring fruit - watermelon, specifically. The fish liked that, she said. I became even more intrigued.
I returned to the reservoir the next day and searched endlessly for the fish. Just as I was about to abandon hope, I stepped toward a dip in the tall grass where it seemed others had stood before. There, I found a cluster of rocks jutting up out of the water. I stepped onto the rocks, closed my eyes, and tried to imagine what others had done to summon the fish. Then I remembered the watermelon, and my heart sank - I had forgotten it at home.
I opened my eyes, and suddenly, there before me floated the fish! Golden and glistening in the midday sunlight, it stared up at me expectantly. The butterflies in my stomach returned. I greeted the fish and apologized for not having a snack to share, promising to return the next day with double. It simply floated there, unmoving save for its left fin, which gently treaded the water to keep itself oriented toward me - toward a potential meal. I lingered as long as it did, a moment that felt like both forever and the blink of an eye. When it had decided I wasn’t bringing food, it turned its tailfin and swam away - only to circle back, as though it had already forgotten me and my empty hands, before turning away again. “Tomorrow,” I thought, “tomorrow I’ll feed it a whole watermelon.”
I continued visiting the fish - who, according to my excited friend, was named Moi the Koi - feeding it and photographing it throughout the summer and into early fall.
One cold day, however, I couldn’t find Moi anywhere - not even at our special watermelon spots. I wondered if fish like Moi hibernate, or if a worse fate had befallen it. I convinced myself that the fish had simply retired for the season and pushed away the darker thoughts. I continued visiting the reservoir through the winter and early spring, expecting to reunite with Moi once the water warmed. But the melting ice came and went, flowers bloomed, pollen blanketed the water’s surface, flies bred above it, fish leapt at night to prey on them, the moon rose and fell, the sun followed day after day - yet Moi did not reappear.
As summer approached, rumors began to spread that Moi had died: of old age, of starvation, of a toxic algae bloom - or perhaps had been killed, caught by a fisherman, taken by a heron, or eaten by the enormous snapping turtle that had appeared in the reservoir from who-knows-where. For a time, I held out hope, but eventually I began to accept that I would never see Moi again.
These photographs were made as I searched for Moi - first while it lived, then during its disappearance, and finally as I searched for acceptance of its death.
John Dalterio
Manchester, Connecticut, 2025