by Claire Tames Nelson
Today a pomegranate broke open on the supermarket floor, & sucked the breath out of my mouth while I coughed up red seeds. I want to be more like the Olde Times Buffet across the street from Publix with the big sign that says “best quality food available,” but you hold me back with a hand in my gut. Imagine if I knew myself so well; to say, yes, of what is available to me in the panhandle of Florida I am doing my best. Which is to say, of course not everything is great, and yes some parts of me are questionable. I could tell you which, but I’d rather not. Some parts of me are good, even in ways you might find surprising. This is a fine way to think of yourself if you are a buffet in Tallahassee, but what if you’re human, like me? What if, like me, you hit a pedestrian with your car because you were annoyed at the driver behind you? What if you saw two cardinals in the road, one couldn’t fly, and you circled back to help them but got scared? And now I think of the cardinals all the time, the birds themselves, the one flying awkwardly between his companion and the side of the road, but also the symbol of them and me, the color red, a hand in my gut. I read one time that two neutron stars were so bewitched by you that they became one big angry cloud of gold and platinum. All the happy scientists and howling wind can’t save me from you. Can’t keep my dog from swallowing a toy squeaker whole & dying.
Claire Nelson is a poet and human living in the coastal empire. You can find her work at low tide.