2/30
Leaning against the kitchen sink, you shuck oysters
like a child cracks knuckles, with the lip of the knife
tapped at the neck of the barnacled surface.
The muscle hinge clings to the shell before your blade slides beneath it,
and you rock it back and forth in your cupped hand,
watching the saltwater drip out.
The bundle of flesh slides from the shell to your mouth
as naturally as if you are swallowing your own adam’s apple.
You tell me it tastes like ocean.
I wonder if you have ever used a metaphor while describing something before
you are all graph and metal, direct as a knife severs muscle.
But you taste the ocean in the body of these oysters.
They are the flesh of your god, best received leaning
over the altar of the kitchen sink.
You mother’s ashes were scattered at the beach.
Later, the oyster farmers harvested double the crop.
You visit her beach often—
park your car between the scrub pines—
climb the boulder left over from the low tide’s waste.
When I visited with you,
the only words you uttered were quiet,
as if they laid unshucked in a shell
beneath six feet of wet sand.
Your gaze fixes on the oyster farmers,
you are waiting for them to unearth you.
beautiful
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