Sand Crabs
We wait for the rows of twinned slits to appear like closed eyes on the surface of the swash zone.My stubby six year old toes, my sister’s shins scrubbed with sand. We wait with red and yellowbuckets for the foam of air holes when the tide pulls away.
The tide pulls our ankles too. The shadows on the horizon aren’t boats, but eyes like acrocodile’s popping over the surface. The ocean watches, waiting for us to wade too deep, so itcan pull little girls into its mouth.
The cold tide bites our toes, and my sister gasps. The sign. We’ve found some. We dig our fistsinto tan, wet mud that glops between our fingers. We blow the roof off the house of the molecrabs. The mole crabs scatter, flick antennae, wiggle their parade of little grey feet. Burrow awayfrom giant hands wielding hard bucket sides.
We delve up great fistfuls of mud and crab which escape between the gaps. Leg and mandibletickling between our fingers, we pile the sand into the red and yellow buckets. A zoo of crabsleaping, trapped against its plastic bottom.
Heavy now with crabs, we drag our buckets towards the waves. The treacherous tongue with itsgravitational arms. Tip the lip of the bucket just so, my sister shows me, so that it can catch thewater but not spill out the crabs. The crabs want their water.
Once they’re caught, there isn’t much to do. This is no ant farm. No observations can be madeunder that thick blanket of brine and sand. We can only guess that the crabs are... Dreaming?Crying? Trying to burrow through the hard centimeters that bar them from the beach?
We don’t know. All we can do is turn the bucket over again, slap it down sand-castle style, likeback into like. We watch the crabs fall onto their backs in a tangle of carapace and leg, and thenfind their way again, drag that blanket back over themselves tail-first. We scrape out every lastclump of sand and crab back onto the shore, grains itchy and trapped beneath our fingernails.And we begin again.
I named all the crabs in my bucket. I begged our parents to let me take them home. The maw andhand of the sea wants to bring me down, where maybe it’s prepared a girl-sized terrarium.We both have the same problem, though.
We wouldn’t know how to feed it.
Diptych
I. (Then)
I rip hard castanets of bay mussel
from the rock face, snapping the strong filaments
with my child hands.
A long overhead arc launches them
into the blue salt with a satisfying
plunk.
Snap, plunk. The pleasure
of tearing, the pleasure of the strength of my child body,
and the smooth keratin ridges under my fingertips.
A girl, a friend I don’t know–
every kid on the beach is a friend– says,
You know those are alive, right?
You know those are animals.
I thought they were the strands of kelp washed on the shore,
whose bubbles rupture and coat your hands in a pungent oil.
I thought they were the barnacles scraped roughly
off the elegant ladies at the marina. I thought
they were the torrents of iceplant that scale the cliff slopes,
the waxy-skinned spines we snap open, the slick gooey insides.
II. (Now)
The corn snake, which
should not live in the city,
slides carnelian scales over my neck,
lets me wear her
like a scarf. Her cool muscled form
drapes me,
an expert gymnast, a master of contortion
and balance.
I stroke her length with my fingers, but she takes no pleasure.
How can I tell your snake I love her?
You can’t really, says my roommate.
A snake’s brain isn’t big enough for complex emotions.
She knows safe and not-safe, pain and not-pain.
My roommate,
who lovingly scrubs fifty-gallon tanks,
stokes the heat and humidity in our Minnesota apartment,
keeps snakeskins in a glass jar, shimmering.
When this snake dies, we will both be devastated.
And where will our love go?
The Ship of Theseus
I.
I lie here/ contemplating the ship of Theseus/ and whether it mourns/ its original timbers/ when the carpenter comes/ to pry up/ worm-eaten boards/ does the ship of Theseus/ contemplate an old sailor/ treasures his gangrenous toe/ because it is his/ when the surgeon comes/ with a saw does he plead/ for the life of his toe/ though it poisons him because/ it is familiar/ how a boat stays moored/ avoiding a shipwreck/ the sea brings/ salt in the/ stagnating wounds
II.
I am become/ a worm/ eating the ship of Theseus/ as it stays moored too long in/ the sea brings/the sickness/ eating the old sailor/ and his gangrenous toe/ is cut away and burnt/ like the original
timbers/ of the ship of Theseus/ still feels phantom pain of/ what was pried up/ was poison
III.
The ship of Theseus/ was never meant to be/ the ship of Theseus/ was meant to be/ a tree in the coastal forest/ does not lie down/ and plead for the life of/ a saw handle/ or a board/ eventually worm-eaten/ by me/ pried up/ by the surgeon/ because it poisons/ the ship of Theseus/ and its sailor/ pleads for the life/ of a tree
IV.
I am become/ the ship of Theseus/ happily/ never knowing if/ the sea brings/ salt in the wound/until I am already far/ from mooring/ irretrievable/ like a mourned man’s toe/ tossed to a worm/cut away by/ a surgeon who comes/ to pry the poison/ from the ship of Theseus/ I lie here becoming
Leo Rose Rodriguez is a nonbinary, neurodivergent writer and artist based in Minneapolis, on traditional Dakota land. They are the author of the poetry chapbook Fatherland, Motherland and the hybrid collection ...and this would be Moshiach. Their work has been featured in The Pinch Journal, The Indianapolis Review, Better Homes and Dykes, and elsewhere. They are a Best of the Net 2025 nominee.
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