Pretending Not to be Dangerous

by Amanda Chiado

My husband says the crabs he catches are filled with the souls of his dead. He leaves like a ghost before dawn, and his clothes are already stained with blood. I draw him near like a homecoming, or a memory I plan to keep. I like that I still feel like I am dreaming. Recently, he has taken to rubbing my legs and feet before he says goodbye and I can see how I am too, a soft animal made of desire. He comes back smelling of the far away, yet not Peter Pan, and his ship mates are chummy and tired and manly. They catch their own transgressed souls. He can’t kill the crabs right away since they are harboring messages on their hard shells, in their fur kissed mouths, in their pinchers. He treats them fairly, but their sadness is gut punch when you open the cooler. They lay on each other and look up at the sun. They pretend, like me, that they are not dangerous. My son wants to keep them but kept is not a wishing rock. It may be the winter that makes us so desperate. The thinning of the veil between here and there. Eventually my husband eats the messages, covered in butter to smooth the salvation, and his eyes swell up with the tears of the ocean, and we brace ourselves and buoy the dog. The house fills with wet memory. We ride out the rocking waves until Easter, and then my husband rises from the water, dripping, soft and wrinkled as a newborn.

Amanda Chiado is the author of Vitiligod: The Ascension of Michael Jackson (Dancing Girl Press). Her work has most recently appeared in Rhino, The Pinch Journal, and The Offing. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart & Best of the Net. She is the Director of Arts Education at the San Benito County Arts Council, is a California Poet in the Schools, and edits for Jersey Devil Press. www.amandachiado.com/em>