Once,
I ate a clam that didn’t open upon
acrid heat and steam.
I slid my teeth between its shell and
swiped it like a credit card.
I paid it my respects,
examining the dead body before hungering for it
like I did its live brethren.
It still tasted, I suppose,
like the sea in a gummy bear.
I don’t think there could be anything stranger
than what I’ve been told about these rubbery risks.
Then again, I have fallen in love
with the strangest silhouettes;
the darkness of feathered eyelashes,
the languidness of long school pants,
the reliability of a filleting arm.
Across my youth, I’ve pried open the same shadows;
behind rich-kid-music-school drum sets ,
feet bent into shallow drains outside classrooms,
3AM bodies across filthy couches.
They all taste the same, these clams.
The salt of the vast seas on my tongue,
the sand of their shells crunching between my teeth.
They’re not much different from the rest,
these closed clams, these rubbery risks.
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