Frozen Fish

Coming home from work is the same every day. The streets are noisy, cars roar, people hurry, and children laugh and play with pure innocence. Life around me is alive, yet inside me—silence.

  There is a strange emptiness in my heart. As if something is missing. But what? I don’t even know. Deep inside my chest, there is a voice wanting to speak, but no one seems to hear it.

  As usual, I entered that same store to buy dinner. The shop assistant greeted me with his usual smile, his usual words:

 “Hello, how can I help you?”

 And I, once again, was silent. I didn’t know what to buy. I simply wandered between the aisles. Fruits, sweets, colorful products… and finally, I stopped in front of the freezer.

  There it was — the frozen fish.

  My eyes instantly caught it. Strange… why did my heart recognize this coldness so quickly? I reached out — cold, yet familiar somehow. In that very moment, I felt something… something I couldn’t explain even to myself.

  I took the fish. The shop assistant, as always, was polite:

  “That will be 30,000 so‘m,” he said with a smile.

 I handed him the money, but my thoughts had already walked away with that frozen fish. As I walked home, a thought crossed my mind: “This is not the fish… it’s me who is frozen.”

  Yes, perhaps I am the same — alive, yet without warmth. My feelings have frozen inside my heart. That’s why I cannot love, cannot feel gratitude, cannot trust anyone.

 There was a time when I was different — cheerful, innocent, someone who made others laugh. Now everyone says: “You’ve changed, the old Zebi is gone.” Maybe they’re right. Maybe I was once a fish swimming freely in the ocean, but the cold hand of life caught me… and froze me.

 Now I live, but I do not feel. I breathe, but I am not alive.

 Who knows, maybe inside each of us lives a frozen fish — a piece of ice that has grown used to the cold and forgotten what warmth feels like…

My name is Dilobar Maxmarejabova. I am a 2nd-year student at the University of Journalism and Mass Communications, majoring in Philology and English Language Teaching.