peeling shrimp because my mind is a crustacean

and because i’m paying homage to the women before me who were beaten with the flat part of a knife and flipped over in a butcher shop. imagine yourself splitting into six segments from the breasts down, having a set of legs to walk and another to swim. no creature should have both. imagine omnivores using multiple pinchers to rip your translucent shell from your body. your skin isn’t shelter, it’s bait. gray & unconscious, uncoiling into bodily flush when boiled. once we’re opaque, they’ll finally dispose of us: simple homicides, garnished with cilantro. our corpses will overhear drunks laying their hands on thighs that have turned away and we will be helpless, hanging from cocktail glasses like idiots. we pity the bycatch, but is idolatry any better? they think we’re like mermaids. separate our heads from our tails, and our conscience remains the same. we sauteed on the cast iron, caressed by spatulas used against high-tempered husbands, awaiting our perfect domestic deaths. we float, regurgitating all we’ve ever done for others while we are hooded by silver diamonds. how selfish of us! shying from martyring our life-vessels, squirming incoherently on ceramic. if i spear your belly in half and let it scorch on my tongue, i am sorry. if i cannibalize, i hope to be spared. my sisters, i worship the meat of our colonizers.