Carcinization, or an Explanation for my Recent Crabbiness

carcinization (evolutionary): eternal recurrence of the crab form

1. i'm a cancer. climb to the surface, take a protractor to the night sky, and read me there — cover to cover unfold-ing, stars blanketing. i, the cynic, am almost-contrac-tually obligated to denounce this new religion but i can't deny that i, too, feel moon-pulled. i, too, can float and lose my own outlines in the salt, like a double-amputee stick figure mistaken for a crab.

2. i can't eat seafood anymore. i've come to realize that every child has their Old Yeller moment. perhaps the divide between human and beast is our conscious abbreviation of the circle of life, snipping its sinewy tendons into a line with a start and an end. my mother returned from the market with three new friends and that night we feasted before the tears had dried, crustacean souls cleaved from bodies and chins dripping with soft-shell crab.

3. i would work for minimum wage on the ocean floor. o, conical lord, you dazzle me with your click-clack boxing gloves and rattling grin that smells of blood and money. how captivating your crimson skin, your nose that strikes like lightning, playful raindrops of boiling oil. i promise to flip your patties with more zeal than that smarmy yellow rectangle ever could, for you are Bezos as a crab.

Josie Barboriak