Back to Issue Fifty-Nine

Summer boiled in its brittle shell. Dad left no forwarding address. Tire marks streaked our front lawn
yellow until the gods finally cried. I couldn’t peel the meat from the lobster; I couldn’t crack its armor.
Mum said lobsters can’t feel pain. As she cooked, I watched papaya-seed eyes pop in the boiling water.
A lobster’s pain was the absolute value of its need to escape. Maybe dad’s was, too. A man in a blue
shirt hammered a for sale sign into the mouth of wilting hydrangeas. Mum milked tears from her
drywater eyes. The hydrangeas were once her pride and joy. I rode my bike everywhere and nowhere.
I pedalled as hard as I could, until the trees raced backwards. I pedalled until the sky stood still and I
gasped for air. Plump cherries in plastic sleeves filled our fridge. I loved cherries, the sting of their
sweetness. They dyed my teeth purple, left the rims of my nails sweet. But I couldn’t bring myself to
eat any. I couldn’t stand the spat-out seeds and the bellyache. I wished for winter, for numb fingers
and brittle nights of rimy solitude. I wished for everything that was not, until we packed a rubbish bag
full of not anymore: his rough brown flips flops, faded t-shirts still damp with memories. Mum and I
drove to the Salvation Army in watery silence. After, I lay in his empty closet and clung to the i love
you he muttered as his car rolled away. He rolled away like a marble down a drain. It was hopeless, so
I swam in the ocean. I sold the salt of my sadness to the Atlantic. Floating on my back, I prayed for
the ocean to swallow me whole. That night, I dreamt I was a baby cradled in a lobster trap.