Appetite

Mussels

23 Mussels Each pace your legs overstride a greater space, water greener, darker in the lathery roil slap-sloshing against stones. Jumping from rock to rock you reach the foremost point the sea bursts covering shouts and gulls’ shrieks from the shore. Bending, you grope for the sharp bluish shells. They clamp against the black shale, cluster hard lunulae of petals, tight suction of their muscles resisting the drift of the recede and before the next wave comes you can see their polished, striated backs: one family beaking water oozes gurgles closing, opening a long murmur of clabbery drowsiness. You twist and jerk them pushing a clump with your bare hands strain against strain, so stubborn, till they give under your strength cutting scars in your skin. Dripping off sea, the mussels close tight impervious to your prying nails deep sleeper’s eyelids that won’t give up dreams for light. ...