Lobsters were on sale this week, so forty little men lobsters are crammed together in the tank at the grocery store. Something about their little man lobster bodies, piled so carelessly on top of one another, and pressed, motionless, against the thick acrylic, brings memories bubbling up. Fishing off a South Florida beach pier, nineteen, sunbaked in a bikini top and short shorts, brimming with a healthy dose of desperation to impress the sunbaked lobster man with my angling. I pull seven or eight quicksilver bodies from the roiling sea and immediately drop them into the offensively orange bucket. Slowly, the stunned fish begin to recover and swim around their temporary habitat in dizzying circles. A little later, I catch something bigger. The scales are red this time. I drop the snapper into the bucket. The lobster man and I take some time to admire my aching arms. Eventually, it’s time to leave, which means throwing back our catch. One of the smaller fish had gotten caught on the body of the snapper when it finally suffocated and went belly up. The surface tension of water is a bit different than acrylic. I’m still really bummed about the lobsters.
Natasha Cellich 