We're out of control, and cocktail sauce. Livia Stein illustrated
Italics are the crab talking (I think). We’re out of control, and cocktail sauce Destined to boil, that crab (I imagine) sees me, seeing it. You make a bitter familiar, tied to the harsh schedule in your prison. Both of us will be better come dinnertime. I’m not hungry. My pain won’t be mellowed by hot buttered spider. My wrists ache—plus all this lack of control. I’m too nervous to wield the shell cracker. I wish you’d climb out of there and side-stroll out the door, through town and to the ocean. We’re underwater. We just gotta roll— even if it’s California. The banks closed on the seabed, but I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. So what? I got tanked. Too late? Too early? Here is here is here is here is where I am with claws and shanks. Adapt. Bubble. Crawl—and then an arm yanks.