My mother strokes the sand
toward her with her palm, drawing
the story out, then levels it
back with the edge of her hand.
All the while
a ghost crab, half hidden
under a canopy of crisped
sargassum, so well-camouflaged
it's just a blur of movement,
has been sliding in and out
its tunnel, forming identical boulders
of damp sand to stack
at the entrance,
a bulwark. The story
is a stone she collects
from the titeline of the past.
and returns it to her tongue,
a sparer truth: once she hid
a pill bottle in her pocket,
and what the shop owner's
back was turned, pulled
a mystery snail off the glass
and dropped it into the vial
of water, snapping down
the lid. When her father
saw it in her tank, he wrapped
her braid around his fist
and wrenched her off her feet.
A new detail brightens
the memory's
aching chamber. He gave
her aquarium away.
When she loosens her fist
to let fine sugar pour
through the hourglass
of her hand, the crab hunches
sinking the picks of its legs
in the sand. Its eye bulbs,
lusterless as if dipped in black wax,
fold inward in a cringe.
A mind works this way, in secret
tirelessly shaping, excavating
a refuge for the tender self. A child
steals the power she longs to have.
What's a snail's shell
but a coiled tunnel
What's the tough door
but a body building no.